The National Capital Rally will return to the Kowen Forest, south-east of the city, for three critical timed stages and, for the first time in more than 12 months, spectators will be allowed to be there.
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Entry to the rally will be free but spectators must register and be ticketed to enter the Kowen Village and watch the cars pass through the complex at speed on the first day of the event.
Canberra brothers Harry and Lewis Bates have been seeded first and second respectively for the March 27-28 event.
Ironically, the car in which Harry Bates won the 2019 national rally championship will be starting in position three. The car is now owned by Australian-based Irish haulage contractor Richie Dalton.
Aside from the three Kowen stages, there will be four at Tidbinbilla, two on each day of the rally, and a power stage at Hyles Block. One of the new Kowen stages is one called Bald Hill, which has not been used before.
Channel Seven has committed to live-streaming the Hyles Block power stage, the final timed run of the rally, on its Seven Plus channel, and showing a full highlights package later.
Clerk of the Course for the rally, Adrian Dudok, said he was very close to gaining access to two of Canberra's famous rally stages of yesteryear, Bluetts forest and the twisty, challenging Pipeline stage along the Molonglo River, but couldn't quite make it happen.
"It would have been great to use them [the Molonglo stages] for the final time but residential development is happening so quickly out there that we couldn't be guaranteed the roads for March," he said.
"There was a period in Canberra's rally history when we competed on roads before the houses went around Gowrie, Richardson and Chisholm. But that's all changed with the pace of building these days."
Meanwhile out at the Hume workshops of Neal Bates Motorsport, it's a literal race against time to prepare the team's two new Yaris rally cars for their first test session on Friday.
Lewis Bates, who finished runner-up to his elder brother Harry in the 2019 title series, said that one of the turbocharged, all-wheel drive Toyotas has its suspension fitted up but there's still much fabrication and assembly work to do before the cars are packed up in the truck for their first run in anger around the forest.
Last year's title hunt was suspended due to the coronavirus, with Harry Bates winning Canberra's non-championship round in November.
"Friday is our first scheduled test but it's going to be a rush to get both cars ready in time," Lewis Bates said.
"There's still lots of bits and pieces to be fitted up, front bars to go on, sump guards, that sort of thing."
He said the busy state of the workshop hadn't left him with much time to think too far ahead to the local opening round of the championship, and it was nerve-racking to debut two new cars in the same event.
"When the cars are this new and untested, there's so much that has to go absolutely right," he said.
