adminChampionship draft calendar, released at the weekend, the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally, which has acted as the opening round of the tough annual continental motor rallying event for the past two years, has been replaced by the Rally Bandama of Cote d’Ivoire.
The Rally Bandama of Cote d’Ivoire comes in as the opening round of the 2013 ARC series and has been slated for March 1 to 3.
Mike Exton, a member of the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally organising committee, confirmed yesterday that the event will not be part of the ARC series next year.
He said they decided to pull the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally out of the ARC series because “it was becoming too expensive to stage this international event”.
But Exton quickly pointed out that they would still stage the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally sometime next year but it will not be part of the ARC series.
“In fact, we formally notified the FIA (the world’s motorsport governing body) sometime in the middle of this year that we were no longer in a position to stage the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally as the opening leg of the ARC series.
“This event was becoming too expensive for us to stage it and we were also struggling to find a sponsor for it,” Exton said.
He added that they were also finding the FIA entry fees for this event too prohibitive for them.
“The FIA were charging us about 3 500 to 4 000 euros as a registration fee for us to just stage the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally as part of the ARC series.
“This was minus the other fees that we were incurring which includes organising the staging of this event and flying in stewards and other officials from outside Zimbabwe.
“In fact, it was costing us roughly US$15 000 just to be affiliated to the FIA and we found out that it was becoming too expensive for us to continue being part of the ARC series.
“But we are probably going to stage the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally sometime next year but it will not be part of the African Rally Championship series,” Exton said.
The Zimbabwe Challenge Rally has over the past years been part of the tough eight-round ARC series, which attracts the continent’s top motor rally drivers. The popular event used to be staged in Harare and its surrounding areas of Ruwa and Norton during the last weekend of August in the past years before it was moved to the month of March for the first time last year.
This came after the world’s motorsport governing body, FIA, acceded to a request by the Zimbabwe Motorsport Federation to have the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally moved from August to March as they (the ZMSF) wanted to attract more foreign entries for this big international event. But the ZMSF still struggled to attract more foreign entries for the Zimbabwe Challenge Rally despite moving it from August to March. The event, in 2011 and this year, attracted a handful of foreign entries who came from Zambia and Rwanda, and this might have forced the ZMSF to have a re-think and pull it out of the ARC series next year.
Most top Zimbabwean motor rally drivers competed in the ARC series over the past two decades and they enjoyed a large chunk of success in this tough continental event in which the country produced three African champions in Abe Smit, young Conrad Rautenbach and Jamie Whyte. Rautenbach won the ARC Drivers’ title twice, first in 2007, becoming the second Zimbabwean after Smit (1994) to be crowned as the African champion, and then in 2011.
The young driver and Smit were joined in this “elite club” by Whyte who clinched the ARC Drivers’ title in 2009 before repeating this feat in 2010.
FIA ARC 2013 draft calendar
*March 01-03 – Rally Bandama Cote D’Ivoire (*subject to FIA confirmation)
April 18-20 – Sasol Rally South Africa
May 17-19 – Zambia International Rally
June 14-16 – Rally of Tanzania
July 05-07 – Kenya Safari Rally
August 16-18 – Pearl of Africa Uganda Rally
September 20-22 – Rwanda Mountain Gorilla Rally
November 01-03 – International Madagascar Rally
Online Reporter