The fourth round of the 2025 EROAD Australian Rally Championship (ARC) season kicks off this weekend with the spotlight on the highly anticipated The Middle of Everywhere Gippsland Rally.
With the introduction of night stages and being the first endurance round of the year, there are plenty of narratives starting to shape up for the event.
Here’s a look at some of the big talking points ahead of the round.
Register for free tickets to the weekend’s Spectator Points here.
Endurance Round
This weekend’s The Middle of Everywhere Gippsland Rally is the first of two events that run as an Endurance round as opposed to the usual Sprint Round.
With Sprint rounds split into two heats, it allows crews to start over on the Sunday if they crash out on Saturday and still pick up to 50 championship points for a Heat win, as well as extra points in the Power Stage.
However with an Endurance round, Sunday is a continuation of Saturday meaning that if teams crash out and they do eventually get the car back on the road, they will tumble down the order with all the extra time added on from the stages they missed.
In addition to that key element, there is just one offering of points with 100 championship points given to the event winner as opposed to 50 points on each day.
It also means that there is only one Bosch Motorsport Ballot, which takes place at BMR Automotive Rally Show on Friday night.
Title Fight
As it stands, Kiwi stars Hayden Paddon and John Kennard sit atop the ARC summit with a solid points haul of 256 points, courtesy of four heat wins across the year.
Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally of Canberra winners Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin occupy second place on 221 points, while reigning champions Harry Bates and Coral Taylor sit in third a further 29 points behind their teammates with two heat wins themselves.
Although it’s only the midway point of the season, conversations about the title fight are well underway as there are a maximum of 330 points available and 64 currently separates the top three.
That points difference could look very much different by the end of the weekend – especially depending on the results of each of the top three.
Lewis Bates recently revealed to speedcafe.com that while both he and Harry currently have equal attention from the team as both are in the fight, one may be given priority for the final two rounds depending on the situation by Sunday evening.
That certainly sets up an intriguing inter-team battle as the Toyotas attempt to take down the leading Hyundai.
A further four crews still run with a mathematical chance of winning the title, however the most likely outside of the top three is IntelliSpatial Fleetcare Racing’s Alex Rullo and Steve Glenney, but being 123 points in arrears to Paddon and Kennard means some minor miracles need to occur.
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Night stages
You have to go back quite some time for when the ARC last held official stages under the night sky, and adding it to an endurance round makes this weekend’s narrative even more gripping.
The night stages take place as Saturday’s second loop, with Thomson 2 to run in the setting sun around 5:49pm AEST, before Deep Creek 2 (6:09pm AEST), Macallister 2 (6:57pm AEST) and Chesterfield 2 (7:18pm AEST) will run in complete darkness.
With many crews not having an entirely large catalogue of experience in the night, it will add even more pressure to the challenge of competing.
Dust
Not only will the running at night be a challenge, but the dust will throw a spanner in the works. In the forests of Gippsland, night-time typically has no wind, which means the dust hangs around.
Effectively that would be like driving through fog where visibility is extremely low. So for the average Joe, the feeling of charging through on gravel roads in the night with dust hanging around, headlights cutting through dust like fog is an extremely complicated prospect.
As a result, event organisers have implemented three-minute gaps between the ARC cars for the four night stages in the hopes that the dust will have more time to settle.
This also makes the Bosch Motorsport Ballot extremely important as driving from the front would be key.
