After a three year hiatus, world championship rallying returns to Australia with the Repco Rally Australia on 2-6 September. This time the venue has moved from the West Coast, where the Western Australia promoters achieved new standards of organisation and new levels of innovation, to the East. The event ran for 19 years in the West, during which time many new rallying ideas which first came to light in Australia, like Superspecials, became a fixed part of the sport world wide. Now the event has moved to the other side of the country into virgin rallying territory, a level playing field for the teams and a challenge for all concerned.

The founder of the Rally Australia project is Brisbane (Queensland) based businessman and former rally competitor Garry Connelly who, despite the hospitality and freedoms available in the west, had longed to bring the event nearer home. When a change in political leadership in Western Australia altered their policy concerning support for the event, the opportunity for a move came along. Connelly however had already sensed a change in the tide and had himself moved further into motor sport management in Australia and on an international level, but all the time kept his finger on the pulse of Australian level world championship rallying. So when Western Australia authorities finally pulled the plug, Connelly’s mind raced ahead, eastwards.

Hopes for a Queensland based event were large in the mind but difficult to materialise. There were political issues in all directions, much of which were connected with Queensland’s challenge for the right to run the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the corresponding development of a motorsport complex in the Gold Coast region south of Brisbane. A project of such a level as this needs governmental approval in Australia, not only on financial matters but also to help map a course through the countless side issues involved. In the end there was another party interested in supporting the event, the state of New South Wales, to the south of Queensland. The area selected for the event was the Tweed Valley region, right in the north east corner of the state, tying in neatly with the chance of running the event based in the tourist centre of Kingscliff. It was NSW in all administrative matters but in fact was less than two hours’ drive down from Brisbane.

The format of the new style Rally Australia is different from the old style events in far more ways than simply a change in location. For a start the stages are going to be run virtually entirely on closed public roads. These are usually gravel surfaced "shire" country roads and in addition, for promotional reasons, there is a convenient venue en route where a downtown stage could be used on tarmac roads. This is to be an alternative to the dramatic figure-of-eight purpose built superspecial courses which were a feature of rallying in Perth. There had long been a popular annual classic car race event on these roads called the "Speed on Tweed" week, a ready made course! The surface of the gravel stages is quite a change from the forest stages in the west, which were characterised by the ball-bearing stones which covered the surfaces and created a special driving challenge. There are only five kilometres of stage route on forest roads.

The next surprise in the land known for its wide open population free expanses was that the average length of stages was the shortest in the championship! This was a consequence of running the rally closer to areas of greater population levels, where a high proportion of roads within easy reach of established centres of population have already been asphalted. And perhaps the greatest challenge of the new environment has been to convince the people living in the area of the sincerity of world level rallying and its compatibility alongside the cherished benefits of country life.

Conscious that these ideals could become sensitive issues, the promoters of the East Coast event undertook a series of independent surveys intended as much to allay the fears of people who had not previously lived with this form of motorsport, as to alert themselves of issues they had never considered. In the end the state itself issued legislation approving the event on condition that the recommendations of the reports were followed through. All these procedures took time, indeed the final go-ahead for the rally to take place was only granted when the legislation was signed off late in June 2009!

Over recent years the format of national Australian rallying has moved on. Local rally cars no longer complied to strict FIA rules but were modified to suit the wishes of both participating manufacturers and the need to balance the performance of Group N and Super 2000 style cars. Also there are now no locally owned World Rally Cars in the country. Fortunately there werevarious FIA compliant Group N cars available, and the organisers opened up a special category for locally compliant Group N cars, for which three entries were received, one of whom was to be driven by a prize-drive winner Michael Patton. Patton won the nationwide competition run by the Repco Corporation which, with typically Australian finesse, was promoted under the title "Bloody Big Repco Rally Promotion". The special news is that the Toyota Auris Super 2000 cars are expected to be on the start line, following the FIA homologation effective 1st September of these cars on an Asia Pacific regional level. Super 2000 cars, however, continue to be a little known part of central Australian rally sport, and apart from the two Auris cars only one other of these cars (a VW Polo) has been entered by a local driver.

Repco Rally Australia 2009 style will be a rally of many parts. In addition to the special category for locally modified group N cars which take part on the event but outside the general classification there are entries for six drivers who are contesting the shoot-out for the Asia Pacific Pirelli Star Driver award. The winner will then be among the five drivers who will have a fully paid programme of six rounds of the 20 world championship series. These drivers will only contest the Thursday and Friday stages, although only one of them has opted to compete on the whole event.

All five registered World Championship teams will be present (Munchi’s with a single entry) with Al Qassimi driving a third non registered BP Ford Abu Dhabi entry. There are ten entries from registered PCWRC teams, three of them having seconded their entries to local drivers on a one-off basis. Another driver (the provisional championship leader Armindo Araujo) has taken over an entry from another championship team, because the entry level in Australia is expected to be less strong than the expected entry level in the final round (in Britain). There are also two Guest PCWRC drivers for the event, Cody Crocker (expected to win his fourth successive Asia Pacific title) and Neal Bates in a Toyota which was formerly sponsored by the national importers under local sporting rules and is now being run by Bates privately.

Even if the new style Rally Australia generates only a tenth of the fever that the old events in Perth used to do, it will be a great success. Having this event based in the East Coast means much to motor sporting businessmen who feel that the event has now come into the centre of Australian commercial life. The event is being heavily promoted in the Sydney area where there are promotional activities on the Sunday 30th August and Monday 31st August, before the crews travel north to start their reconnaissance. Nearly everything is going to be new, the only traditional feature which the event is expected to retain is the welcome given to visitors from round the world.

3mmm