Within the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) series which is the pinnacle of rallying, there is a subcategory for slightly modified production cars known as Group N. It is the FIA Production car World Rally Championship (P-WRC).

P-WRC events are run parallel to WRC events on the same format, but it is only eight rounds from the WRC's sixteen round calendar that P-WRC events are paired with. Furthermore, each P-WRC crew must declare six events in which they participate from those eight rounds in advance. They can earn their championship points in those six events only.

Compared to World Rally Cars, permitted modifications to Group N cars are so strictly limited that they are virtually identical to commercially available street legal version of the same model. This means that the competitiveness of a model depends largely on the performance potential of its street version. Therefore, in recent years, this category has been dominated by two Japanese technically advanced all wheel drive performance cars, namely the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and the Subaru Impreza.

Each round basically consists of three days; Leg 1 on Friday, Leg 2 on Saturday and Leg 3 on Sunday when the competition concludes. Some events also have the ceremonial start normally in the centre of the host town on Thursday, sometimes followed by a Super Special Stage on the same day.

The scale of a P-WRC event is much larger than that of a Japanese domestic rally event and its total competitive distance is more than 300km, with a total running distance well beyond 1,000km. Moreover, required average speed is much higher than that in Japanese domestic events, which means quite high levels of durability are asked for Group N cars that are virtually identical with their road going versions. Then, the natural terrains P-WRC events are run on differ from snow and ice in northern extreme to high altitude mountainous area in parching heat right on the equator.

The world motor sport governing body, FIA (Federation internationale de l'automobile) grants its world championship titles to only three categories; WRC, which includes P-WRC, FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) and FIA Formula One World Championship (F1). ADVAN provides single spec tires for WTCC as the official tire supplier and, in P-WRC, ADVAN-PIAA Lancer won three events in the 2006 season. Therefore it can be said that P-WRC is one of the most important aspects of ADVAN's global motor sport activities.

The "Red in Black" ADVAN liveried car is the one of essential players in P-WRC these days. In 2007, Fumio Nutahara took the wheel of an ADVAN-PIAA Lancer along with his co-driver Daniel Barritt.

The Japanese driver has regularly entered in P-WRC events since 2004. The partnership with Barritt began in the 2006 season and thanks to the Briton's experience of over 200 events (and he is still in his middle twenties!), general communication in overseas events, especially in Europe, has been much improved.

As a result, the Nutahara / Barritt team scored wins in the legendary Monte Carlo, his home event, Japan, and probably the most rigorous event of the calendar, namely Cyprus, and finished the 2006 season as a very close runner-up.

The base of his team is Taska Engineering which is one of the leading rally teams in Japan. Since its early days, they have actively taken part in overseas events including Monte Carlo and gathered much knowledge not only for car preparation but team operations. This makes them a very solid team which Nutahara and Barritt can rely on.

Also, Syms Rally Team, a Japanese outfit which runs a Subaru Impreza in P-WRC, has chosen ADVAN tires for the 2007 season. In the opening round of the championship, Kristian Sohlberg was in the leading echelon through the event and eventually finished third.
　

Fumio Nutahara
　
Born in Kouchi prefecture, Japan, in December 1963. Resides in Hokkaido.
Made his debut in rallying in 1986 and began to enter Japanese Rally Championship in 1990.
In 1994, he became a member of the ADVAN Rally Team and turned full-time professional driver in 1999.
In 1999, he won his first championship title in the JRC C-class. Since then he has taken seven championship crowns in JRC. His full-scale participation in P-WRC started in 2004 and he scored three wins in 2006 when he was ranked second in the championship.

Daniel Barritt
　
Born in GB in 1981.
Started his carrier as co-driver soon after his 16th birthday in 1996 and took the British Rally Championship title in 2002. Despite that he is in his middle twenties, he already has entered over 200 events and gained a fair amount of experience in WRC.
After serving as co-driver for another Mitsubishi Lancer driver, David Higgins in 2005, he was paired up with Nutahara the following year. They won the very first event for the pair in Monte Carlo and two more wins followed that year, which has proved to be a perfect combination for him and Nutahara.