Around 60 cars will line up in the Victorian town of Marysville this weekend, for the start of Round Two of the 2016 Australian Tarmac Rally Championship.

On Saturday, May 28, cars contesting the Lake Mountain Sprint will tackle several runs from Marysville, 98km north-east of Melbourne, to the summit of Lake Mountain in the Yarra Ranges National Park (and return) with the road closed to public use during competition.

On Sunday, competitors will run between Marysville and Cumberland Junction on the Warburton/Woods Point Road. The weekend is made up of 16 closed road ‘special’ competition stages for a total competitive distance of 220km.

“This is the ninth year the Lake Mountain Sprint has been run in the Yarra Ranges/Yarra Valley region, aside from 2009 and 2014, and we’re delighted to be back,” says event director Peter Washington, from Melbourne-based events company Mountain Motorsports, which runs the four-event series.

“We get so much support from Murrindindi Shire, the Lake Mountain Resort, the Marysville Chamber of Commerce and the Marysville Golf Club, as well as the residents, and that’s been right from the start. It’s fantastic.

“Our competitors love this event. They love the roads and they like being based in Marysville because they always feel so welcome. A lot of our entrants come from around Australia to do the series, and many of them like to come early, or stay for a few days after the rally, to enjoy what Marysville and the whole Yarra Valley/National Park area has to offer.”

With one round run and won (Mt Baw Baw Sprint, February 20-21), battle lines have already been drawn for this weekend, with many competitors keen to add more points to their tallies, for series honours. Last year’s outright and classic champions, Craig Dean and Laurie Burton, are among those in action this weekend, along with the winners of the first round.

The ATRC events offer three levels of driving for modern, classic and showroom-spec cars: one for fully licensed rally drivers, competing against the clock in vehicles which meet full tarmac rally specifications.

The second competition category is regularity, where entrants drive each stage of the event in a specified time at a specified average speed. If they arrive late or early, there are penalties, and the crew with the lowest number of penalties is the winner.

The third group is the ‘touring’ category, which allows would-be rally drivers a ‘taste’ of tarmac rallying by driving their road car at higher-than-usual road speeds behind an experienced driver who demonstrates the right techniques. Well known touring car driver Phil Brock will be training the rookies during the Lake Mountain Sprint.

After this weekend, the series goes into ‘hibernation’ over the winter months, with competitors having to wait until the weekend of September 24-25 for their next fix (Snowy River Sprint, based at Lakes Entrance) before the 2016 ‘grand final’ (Great Tarmac Rally, also near Marysville) on December 10-11.

Although the series is based in Victoria, the entry list attracts competitors from every state in Australia, willing to make the commute to drive some great mountain roads under closed road conditions, with the protection of a rigorous safety monitoring system to ‘keep watch’ on them.

Mountain Motorsports has run more than 40 tarmac rallies and touring road events since 1995. The company would also like to acknowledge the support of VicRoads, and sanctioning body, Australian Auto-Sport Alliance.

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