CHILECLOSINGIN ONWRCFIXTURE

GROUP RALLYING EDITOR

Chile is close to agreeing terms to join the World Rally Championship schedule for the 2019 season.

The South American country will run a candidate event a week before next year’s Rally Argentina, after which the WRC Promoter and FIA will decide if it can join the series as a 14th round from 2019 onwards.

WRC Promoter Oliver Ciesla said he felt the proposed Concepcion-based event would bring great roads in the Andes and a significant increase in the fan base for the World Rally Championship.

Ciesla told MN: “We are very close to an agreement. This would be a forest-based rally with really nice, smooth roads with stages going from sea level up to 2000 metres into the mountains. From what we have seen, Chile would, by no means, be behind where some of the events are right now.”

Rally Chile organiser Sebastian Etcheverry outlined the benefits his country and his rally could bring to MN, saying: “Rallying is the second biggest sport in Chile behind football. We have run the Rallymobil series for 18 years and a WRC round is the next step for us. We are ready for this. Our stages – which are mainly wide and fast – are probably the best surfaces in the world for rallying: we have a lot of forest roads and they have to be maintained with compact gravel to allow the trucks to pass by in different weather conditions.

“In Concepcion, we have close to two million people with plenty of hotels and infrastructure.”

Japan is another event pushing for 2019 inclusion. An event based close to Toyota City on the nation’s main island is working with the promoter to find a way on to the WRC calendar. Toyota itself is understood to be pushing this event hard and fast in an effort to have it in place ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Croatia’s challenge looks to be fading now, with the organisers finding it hard to place the event in a preferred September date, with the holiday season ongoing at that time of the year.

Ciesla also added another asphalt event in Europe was not high on his agenda.

“Building the calendar is a portfolio,” Ciesla said. “I don’t need 13 Tarmac rallies in Europe and I don’t need 13-times heritage; with Monte Carlo, with Rally GB and Finland, the calendar has no shortage of heritage. And the calendar is not short of Tarmac in Europe.”