Skoda Celebrates 125 Years of Motorsport Heritage

Discover how Skoda marks 125 years of motorsport, from the 1901 Paris–Berlin race to modern Rally2 success and WRC2 titles. Explore the brand’s racing legacy.

One hundred and twenty-five years of motorsport is not a symbolic anniversary for Skoda, but a continuous line of development that began long before modern world championships existed. The story traces back to 1901, when factory rider Narcis Podsednicek entered the gruelling Paris–Berlin race of around 1,200 kilometres on a Laurin & Klement Slavia B motorcycle. He reached the finish in Berlin, yet was not officially declared the winner. Even so, the event is widely regarded as the symbolic beginning of the brand’s motorsport history.

Only a few years later, competition had become more than a technical test. In May 1906, Laurin & Klement took part in the Vienna–Graz–Vienna endurance event organised by the Austrian Automobile Club, fielding lightweight voiturette-class cars. For the young manufacturer, it marked an important step into organised automobile racing and helped establish its name beyond its domestic market.

In 1936, Skoda achieved a notable result at the Rallye Monte-Carlo, where the crew of Zdenek Pohl and Jaroslav Hausman finished second in the class up to 1,500 cc with a Skoda Popular Sport. The impact went beyond the rally stages: the road-going Skoda Popular Monte Carlo, offered as both a roadster and a coupe, soon followed. Motorsport success was already shaping production models.

The link strengthened in 1961 when Finnish duo Esko Kainanen and Rainer Eklund won their class at Monte Carlo in a Skoda Octavia Touring Sport and finished sixth overall. Performances like these laid the groundwork for the brand’s customer rally programmes, an area that would become central to Skoda Motorsport in the decades to come.

The 1970s produced one of the marque’s most recognisable competition cars, the Skoda 130 RS. At the 1977 Monte Carlo Rally, two 130 RS crews secured first and second places in the category up to 1,300 cc — a class “double” that entered company lore. The RS designation, meaning Rally Sport, became a permanent part of Skoda’s sporting identity and later migrated to production models.

In 1994, Skoda claimed its first major world rally title in the FIA Formula 2 category for cars with one driven axle and engines up to two litres. The 1.3-litre Skoda Favorit triumphed in the championship, underlining how lightweight engineering and efficiency could offset a power disadvantage.

The late 1990s and early 2000s reinforced the brand’s global rally presence. In 1996, Stig Blomqvist steered a Skoda Felicia Kit Car to third place overall at the RAC Rally. Five years later, Armin Schwarz brought the Octavia WRC home third at the demanding Safari Rally in Kenya. In 2005, Colin McRae was running third in Rally Australia with the Fabia WRC before retiring shortly before the finish due to technical issues. Jan Kopecky added a fifth-place overall finish at Rally Catalunya in 2006 — one of the Fabia WRC’s strongest results.

From 2009 onwards, beginning with the Fabia S2000, Skoda intensified its focus on categories accessible to private teams. This path later evolved into the Rally2 era. Andreas Mikkelsen secured WRC2 titles in 2021 and 2023, and in 2026 the brand marked 125 years of motorsport with a special anniversary package for the Fabia RS Rally2.

Across more than a century, competition has functioned as a laboratory for Skoda’s engineering ambitions. From the Slavia B motorcycle to the Fabia RS Rally2, motorsport has consistently influenced the development of road cars. Judging by the brand’s sustained involvement in customer-focused rally categories, that connection appears set to remain a defining element of its strategy well into the future.