Rally New Zealand heads north in 2010

The organisers of Rally New Zealand have confirmed that next year's event will include a selection of classic special stages north of Auckland which were last run in 2005.

The plan to take the rally back to the Northland region, and the high-speed gravel roads around Whangarei, has been made possible by the decision to relocate the rally base to the heart of Auckland.

For the last three years the rally was based from the city of Hamilton, 200km south of Auckland, with all its stages in the surrounding countryside. Prior to 2006 the event had been based in Auckland for 28 years and featured stages to the north and south.

This year's event will return to the earlier format thanks to new FIA guidelines which promote the use of remote service halts. "Rather than having one central service park from which the WRC crews must drive and return to between groups of two or three stages, we are returning to a rally structure used a few years ago,” explained Martin. “This negates the need, in the middle of the day, to return to central Auckland from the regions where the actual rally stages are taking place."

And while the gravel roads of New Zealand are generally considered to be some of the best in the world, Martin revealed that he was considering mixing the surface, in a similar way to this year's round in Cyprus. “Another change for next year is that we can run both tarmac and gravel stages, which gives us flexibility to include some tarmac stages, if we decide to,” he said.

Martin said the route for next year's event, which takes place between 6 and 9 May, was taking shape, although the exact route still needed to be finalised.

“To date, we have established that the teams will head north on Friday 7 May, the first day of rally action, where we will use a number of roads between Maungaturoto and Whangarei. The remote service park will be at the Whangarei Quayside Town Basin, making a popular easy-to-access attraction for people north of Auckland.

“Saturday 8 May will see the crews head to the Franklin district to use many of the roads we’ve used for Rally New Zealand over the past three years while the headquarters was at Mystery Creek Events Centre outside Hamilton. The location of the remote service park in this area is still to be confirmed.”

The event’s final day, Sunday 9 May, takes in the iconic stages around the spectacular Raglan coastline with a remote service park at the Raglan airfield.

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