MOTORSPORT: Push for Rally Oz every year

Rally Australia was part of the WRC every year from 1989 until 2006 in Western Australia. However, it has only been staged twice in the past five years -- on the country's east coast -- and now alternates biennially with New Zealand.

Next year's WRC calendar will be finalised in July or August this year by motorsport's Paris-based world governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The move for Rally Australia to become an annual event again is likely to face stiff opposition from car makers competing in the WRC -- Citroen, Ford, MINI and, from next year, Volkswagen.

The manufacturers recently indicated that they would prefer there was no WRC round in either Australia or NZ because of the small car markets in the two countries and the distance from the European bases of their factory teams. However, the Coffs Coast Advocate newspaper this week reported that Rally Australia had put a proposal to the FIA for the Coffs Coast rally to be held every year as part of the WRC.

"We hope we are successful in securing an Australian round over three consecutive years," Rally Australia chairman Ben Rainsford said. "It makes perfect and logical sense for the event to return to Coffs Harbour... We had extraordinary support from the community last year and the teams and the drivers had a lot of praise for the rally routes.

"Mikko Hirvonen [the Finnish driver who won last year's event] said it best that Rally Australia had some of the best rallying roads in the world. We have also made an application to host the last WRC round of the year.

"It's an ambitious move and a bit of a gamble, given that the championship may already have been decided by then, but we have done so with the view that the teams and drivers can finish the year with a holiday during the Australian summer.

"If Rally Australia returns next year we will do a lot of things differently. A large focus will be on working with the community and local business owners to ensure they leverage off the event to make their investment worthwhile. A lot of work needs to be done to appoint a team with more of a Coffs Harbour focus. We need on-the-ground leadership and the applications and interest in creating that rally hub are already coming together well."

Rally Australia moved to Coffs Coast last year after it was held amid protests in NSW's Northern Rivers region in 2009. Somewhat ironically it has been reported this week that rallying is poised to return to Kyogle in Northern Rivers on the last weekend of August this year as part of an expanded Border Ranges Rally.

An announcement from the organisers of that event said they had "in-principle agreement from the Kyogle Council".

"We have been approached to start the rally in Kyogle on Friday night at the showgrounds with a super special stage and then run a couple of stages on Saturday morning near Kyogle over roads used in the 2009 WRC event," Border Ranges Rally clerk of course Stephen Davies said. "We were initially reluctant to expand the event to Kyogle as the WRC had received such negative reporting. But reading the independent report commissioned by the NSW Government and the Kyogle Council on the WRC event it confirmed what we already knew - that these events are well supported by the overwhelming majority of the community and they provide good economic and social benefits.

"The Gold Coast Tweed Motorsporting Club has been running rallies in northern NSW for over 35 years." GCTMC Inc has been given the Kyogle Council's permission to consult residents along roads that would be closed for the rally.

"We will be talking with those residents along the affected roads in the very near future," Davies said. "It would have been inappropriate of the club to approach residents prior to receiving Council permission."

Citroen accepts world rally disqualification
Citroen has decided against proceeding with its appeal against the disqualification of the victorious DS3 from last weekend's Rally of Portugal for an illegal clutch that cost Mikko Hirvonen the lead in the WRC.

The French manufacturer's factory team said pursuing the appeal would have been "a long and costly procedure".

"Our supplier has sent us a letter of apology acknowledging the existence of a batch of parts which were different from those on the homologation documentation," Citroen team principal Yves Matton said. "This letter confirms that it was never our intention to cheat. At the same time, this situation forces us to look again at our procedures, since these parts were not picked up during our own checks.

"On the second point identified by the scrutineers, the sole supplier of turbocompressors approved by the FIA for all manufacturers has confirmed to us the plastic expansion of the wheel turbine. Additional analysis will undoubtedly confirm that this was due to wear on the part.

"We accept this harsh penalty [disqualification] but are determined to learn the lessons and ensure that we will be even better in future. We still lead both world championships [manufacturers and drivers, courtesy of eight-time world champion Sebastien Loeb], but the gaps have been reduced. We now go into the upcoming rallies more determined than ever to get back to winning ways."

The next WRC round is in Argentina at the end of this month.

Hirvonen, who joined Citroen this season from Ford and finds himself fourth in the championship after the Portugal disqualification instead of leading, said he was "very disappointed" but "there is no anger -- there's no point to anything like that".

"There's nothing we can do about this, except be more careful for the future," he said. "For sure this makes me more determined. We win as a team together and we lose together. We are a team and that's it."

They won the first stage in Lisbon and set good times on three gravel stages on the opening night, maintained a steady pace the next day in wet and slippery conditions that forced the cancellation of three stages, then closed on the leader, Northern Ireland's Alastair Fisher, on the final day.

Victorian Reeves shaved 20 seconds off Fisher's lead on that last day as he won another stage and ended within 40 seconds of him.

"Alastair didn't make it easy for us, but with two stage wins and second overall we couldn't be happier," Reeves said. He and Smyth returned to Australia this week to test the Mazda RX8 SP they will drive in Targa Tasmania, starting on April 17. They will return to Europe for the second round of the WRC Academy at the Acropolis Rally in Greece in May.

"That was caused by Will Davison moving over," Skaife said on the Seven Network's telecast of the race. "You can't do that in the braking area. Once you've got track position you can't move the car (over)."

Edwards told BigPond Sport this week: "There's no way Will did anything wrong. Will had just started to turn left at the point of contact. They both were at the point of turning left when the impact took place. There's no way you could attribute blame to either driver, it was one of those unfortunate things.

"Will only copped a smashing because one of the commentators went over the top in their view of things. I don't think Will changed his line from the point he put his foot on the brake pedal to the point he took it off.

"The fact the stewards didn't even investigate it post-race proves that they came to the same conclusion -- neither driver could be blamed."

The drivers were content to dismiss it as a racing incident, even though the front left suspension damage to Lowndes' Holden Commodore put him out of the race.

Lowndes' Triple Eight team boss Roland Dane seemed to share the view of the drivers too, suggesting in an interview on the telecast that each driver may have contributed equally to the contact. While Edwards' response may be the end of the matter this time, the incident raises the question of how long it will be before Skaife's commentary role gets him into confrontation with competitors.

It's one thing for a commentator to be at odds with participating drivers or team principals, but when that commentator is wearing many other hats -- including as chairman of the new V8 Supercar Commission and head of the Car of the Future Project -- such conflict can hardly be a good thing.

Most disturbing was only 31,000 viewers in Melbourne, where the race was shown on 7mate while a movie, The Sandlot, was screened on Seven's main channel, leading into Great Migrations. Sydney and Brisbane each drew more than 100,000 viewers.

Saturday's average of 250,000 viewers in the five capitals for the Symmons Plains telecast was less than half that of the opening race of the championship in Adelaide four weeks earlier, while Sunday's 286,000 was less than two-thirds the audience of Adelaide's Sunday race -- and that 435,000 for the second Clipsal race was down almost 30 per cent on last year because of a clash with a cricket telecast on Nine.

The Murphy, NZ's most popular touring car driver, has vowed he will be "100 per cent ready" for the next round of the V8 Supercar Championship -- at NZ's Hamilton in a fortnight. Murphy is leading the V8 SuperTourers after the earlier round at Hampton Downs but his seat at Ruapana in Christchurch over Easter will be filled by Fabian Coulthard.

Ruapana also will host an endurance round of the series in October.

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