The Coffs Forest Rally is round four of the Bosch Australian Rally Championship and will see the resumption of the torrid three way battle for the national championship being fought out by Justin Dowel, Mark Pedder and Ryan Smart in the shadow of the World Rally Championship contenders who will be running ahead of the Bosch ARC runners on the road.
The 47 cars entered for the Bosch ARC section of the event will campaign over two days of the WRC event tackling the stages on Friday and Saturday leaving the World Championship contenders and the Classic Cars to compete on the final stages on Sunday September 11th.
According to CEO of the Bosch ARC Scott Pedder the strong domestic entry is a great vote of confidence in Australian rallying and follows on from strong entries the first three rounds of the series in WA, Queensland and South Australia including a bumper entry in Queensland where close to 100 cars nominated for the event.
"To have such strong entries returning to the Bosch ARC in this the first year of our rebuilding plan is very encouraging and will help attract even more entries in the future," said Pedder.
"Entries in the 2011 Bosch ARC are up 82 percent on the same time in 2010 and a whopping 172 percent on the figures for the first four rallies in the 2009 ARC," he said.
"The Coffs Forest Rally presents a great opportunity for us to showcase our domestic championship in front of the World Rally Championship media and teams particularly with the final of our Rallyschool.com.au Australian Junior Challenge where 14 young drivers will be competing for fully paid drives in the final round of the Bosch ARC this year.
"Along with those 14 Rallyschool AJC competitors there are 33 outright Bosch ARC crews including three who will be competing for ARC points but will also be competing against the WRC competitors across the entire three days of Rally Australia," he said.
"There will be nine Unrestricted Bosch ARC cars competing in the Coffs Forest Rally and it will be exciting to see these fire breathing rally cars tackling the same stages as the WRC cars on Friday and Saturday," Scott Pedder added.
It will be fascinating to see the times these cars post on the same stages as the Production World Rally Cars on the Rally Australia stages," he said.
In terms of the Coffs Classic there will be at least seven Ford Escort RS1800s along with a range of other exciting rally machines of the past including Datsun Stanzas, 280Zs and P510s, a Triumph TR7 V8, a Porsche 911 and an Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT.
Five times Australian Rally Champion Ross Dunkerton will be campaigning his Ford Escort RS1800 along with the similar car of Queenslander Stewart Reid who currently leads the Classic rally competition after winning the category in the opening three rounds this year.
"The Classics are crowd pleasers and the many thousands of rally fans who will be in the forests around Coffs Harbour will be thrilled with the spectacle the 27 classic rally cars will be turning on for them," said Scott Pedder.