The Australian Rally Championship, also commonly known as the ARC, is Australia's premier gravel rally competition. A multi-event national championship has been held each year since 1968, excepting 2020.
The Australian Rally Championship (ARC) is typically contested over six rounds held across various regions of Australia.
In addition to the outright Driversâ and Co-Driversâ titles, the ARC features several sub-championshipsâÂÂknown collectively as ARC CupsâÂÂwhich include the Production Cup, 2WD Cup, Junior Cup, and Classic Cup.
The championship includes a mixture of endurance and sprint formats:
According to the official ARC Sporting & Technical Regulations:
Each rally incorporates a Power StageâÂÂa final special stage offering bonus points to the fastest crews. The current system awards 10 points to the fastest crew, 6 to second, then 4, 2, and 1 point respectively down to fifth place. For example, at the 2024 season finale in Tasmania, the Power Stage offered 10 bonus points on top of the 100 points awarded for the endurance event winner.
Six rounds comprised the 2024 Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship
⢠Rally of Canberra: 5âÂÂ7 April
⢠Forest Rally: 17âÂÂ19 May
⢠Rally Queensland: 28âÂÂ30 June
⢠Gippsland Rally: 9âÂÂ11 August
⢠Adelaide Hills Rally: 13âÂÂ15 September
⢠Rally Launceston: 22âÂÂ24 November
The Australia Rally Championship caters to a range of different competitors in the series and with a number of classes and categories; competitors can start rallying at the level that best suits their budget. The outright competition is fought out amongst the names of rallying and is the ultimate test for the competitors at the pointy end of the field. The ARC's top drivers compete in Group N (Production) - cars which have direct links to their road-going counterparts. The ARC also offers opportunities for manufacturers who don't produce Group N cars to build comparable machinery under both the Group N (P) and FIA Super 2000 regulations. Another award that is desirable for competitors to chase is the Privateers Cup for competitors who don't have support from the manufacturer teams. The F16 Championship is the small car category (1600cc, 2WD) and a budget-level place to start rallying. The outright winner of the Championship is an Australian Champion in the small car category and is added to the record books. The Aussie Cup is the Australian award for large cars (over 2500cc) that enables competitors in the big cars to run popular passenger car models such as V6 and V8's. Amongst the outright awards are the opportunities to chase individual class awards that are based on car capacity and specification which gives competitors the opportunity to pursue class victories.
The more successful cars in recent years of the ARC have been the 4WD 2.0L Turbo models such as the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Impreza WRX STIs and the Toyota Corolla ARC-spec cars, which are actually running Toyota Celica GT-Four engines, 4WD system, etc.. Michael Guest and Mark Stacey campaigned a RWD 2.5L normally aspirated Ford Focus during the 2006 season, switching to a Ford Fiesta prepared for the Super 2000 class in 2007. Most of the cars in the privateer fields are of a similar make, but other makes with success have been the Mitsubishi Mirage, Mitsubishi Galant VR-4, Subaru Legacy, Datsun 1600, Datsun 240Z, Nissan Stanza and the Suzuki Swift GTi.
As with the cars, it tends to be the factory-entered drivers that take the outright placings. Some of these drivers have been Colin Bond, Greg Carr. George Fury, Ross Dunkerton, Geoff Portman, Scott Pedder, Simon Evans, Neal Bates, the late Possum Bourne and Ed Ordynski. Privateer crews that have enjoyed recent success include Nathan Quinn and Steve Glenney. In 2015 Molly Taylor became the first woman to win a heat in the Australian Rally Championship.
<nowiki>*</nowiki> Fred Gocentas co-drove for Greg Carr during the 1978 season while Dawson-Damer co-drove for Colin Bond while also scoring points on one occasion co-driving for Dave Morrow which enabled him to beat Gocentas to the co-driver's title.<br /> <nowiki>**</nowiki> Kate Officer co-drove for David Officer during the 1986 season. <br /> <nowiki>***</nowiki> Bill Hayes co-drove for Molly Taylor during the 2017 season. David Calder and Ben Searcy co-drove for Quinn in 2017.