MOTORSPORT: WRC could come to Bathurst

After an unsuccessful stint at Coffs Harbour, which culminated in Rally Australia losing its place on the 2020 World Rally Championship calendar to New Zealand, senior motorsport officials have targeted Bathurst for a comeback in 2021.

There have already been clandestine meetings with senior officials of the Bathurst Regional Council, Destination NSW and members of the outgoing organisation.

Bathurst is now the clear favourite for the return of the WRC to Australia, ahead of Canberra, Coffs Harbour and several other NSW regional cities.

“Rally Australia is not dead. There is an understanding from the WRC promoter that the event will be back on the calendar in 2021 and beyond,” the spokesman for Rally Australia, Chris Nixon, confirmed to carsales.

He will not go into any detail on future plans, but admits that background work is already underway on a future WRC plan.

“All options are under consideration,” Nixon says.

There is considerable uncertainty over the future make-up of the WRC calendar, with several shaky new events and New Zealand only understood to have funding for a single event next year.

A rotation system, which would see Rally Australia and Rally New Zealand running on alternate years, has re-emerged as one possibility despite the failure of a similar system in the past.

There is even some talk that Australia could make an early return to the calendar if some of the 2020 events are unable to complete their commitments, even though the whole executive team of Rally Australia end their contracts at the end of December.

Rally Australia was a boom event in Perth from the late 1980s but rapidly fell out of favour when it was transplanted to the east coast in the search for better television timing and access to a bigger population pool.

It ran first out of Kingscliff near the NSW-Queensland border, but the event was disrupted by greenie protests, before eight years at Coffs Harbour.

Its operation was underwritten by Destination NSW, which provided most of the $7 million budget for the event, but it was never popular with WRC teams because of the remote location and low fan numbers.

“Why would we go there to drive in front of nobody,” the head of the Hyundai WRC team, Andrea Adamo, told carsales at the Frankfurt motor show this year.

Sydney is the big attraction for the WRC teams and their parent car-makers, and Bathurst is close enough for a ceremonial start in Australia’s biggest scity before the actual rally.

The born-again Rally Australia could take in forestry stages west of the Blue Mountains, high-speed shire road running around Bathurst and a super-special stage focussed on Mount Panorama.