Ask any competitor or die-hard rally fan and they’ll tell you what a great sport rallying is to be involved in. But it can also be a cruel one. Too often our sport – our passion – loses young talent due to lack of funds.
Imagine this. Nick Kyrgios announces he’s quitting tennis. The reason: lack of funds. He can’t find a sponsor and is unable to stump up the cost of getting to each tournament, let alone pay for his ‘kit’. Tennis fans and the mainstream media would be in uproar. “How can we let such a talented sportsman quit the sport?” they would say. A front-page story would appear and a new, lucrative sponsor would jump on board, saving a talented young player from having to give it all away and perhaps, one day, become the best player in the world.
Jack Monkhouse has plenty of talent, but not enough money to sustain an Australian Rally Championship campaign.It's a pity nobody, apart from we dedicated rally fans, uttered such a cry when some of our talented drivers slipped off the radar.
Jack Monkhouse, Glen Raymond, Will Orders and Nathan Quinn (to name just a few) have all departed the sport, aside from the odd event here and there, in recent years due to lack of funds.
It also appears that last year’s Australian Rally Championship (ARC) runner-up, Brendan Reeves, will have to seriously cut back his outings this year after the withdrawal of his team from the ARC.
Other talented Aussie drivers have turned to competing overseas, hoping to attract international sponsors, but often this only lasts a season or two and they return home to hang up the driving gloves for good.
There’s no doubting that motorsport is expensive in any form and the lack of any full manufacturer teams in the ARC at present doesn’t help. We’re not saying that drivers shouldn’t have to inject some of their own funds into their sport, but has the time come when we, as a rally community, should be doing more to get behind our talented young drivers by backing them or helping them to find sponsors?
New Zealander Hayden Paddon’s supporters obviously felt strongly enough about his potential to do something about it. Hayden Paddon Rallysport Global (HPRG) was created when ‘shareholders’ were asked to contribute to the new company to fund his international career.
Nathan Quinn impressed in a Mini World Rally Car in 2013, but was that his rallying Everest?It worked! Paddon is now a part of Hyundai World Rally Team and whilst HPRG still exists, and he still has a band of loyal Kiwi sponsors, it was the shareholder program that made all this possible.
Those same shareholders and supporters were committed to helping a fellow Kiwi make his mark on the world stage. And there’s nothing better than seeing the ‘Hayden army’ on the stages at Rally Australia, cheering on their man. They helped propel Hayden to where he is today and should be justifiably proud.
So where are we going wrong? Rallying has always been the poor cousin in Australia’s motorsport landscape, and not through lack of promotion. Many, many dedicated people have put their heart and soul into trying to give our sport the exposure it deserves over the years, but the mainstream media don’t see a need to give rallying much air-time or print space.
Heck, even one of the country’s foremost motorsport publications published their top 10 Aussie motorsport events recently and there was no mention of Rally Australia, our very own round of the World Rally Championship! How can we even begin to promote our sport and our talented drivers when a major motoring publication doesn’t even recognise a world class event?
So what’s the answer? Is it an easy fix that CAMS should be onto, or is it a fund-raising campaign that drivers should be pushing themselves (a-la Hayden Paddon)? Or perhaps there’s another solution. Tell us your suggestions by emailing news@rallysportmag.com.au or jump on our Facebook page and leave your thoughts.
One thing’s for sure – unless something changes for the better, or James Packer’s son shows some talent in the future and Dad bankrolls him, we’ll never see an Australian take the title of World Rally Champion. Sad but true.
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