With plenty of Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship stars already confirmed, excitement is continuing to build around the highly anticipated Accent Benchtops Rally Queensland in late July.
Crews will be faced with a challenging 216 competitive kilometres of rally action spread across 14 stages designed to challenge even the best rally drivers Australia has to offer.
In the lead up to the event, Rally Queensland regulars, returnees and newcomers have had their say on one of the most popular features of this year’s calendar.
Find out what some drivers have said in the lead up to the event.
Glenn Brinkman
“It’s my local event – it’s nice to be in familiar territory. I know the roads quite well and they generally hold up pretty well for the multiple passes across the weekend.
“You get a real feel for what the territory and the surface is like, and with the roads themselves being technical and not so fast, it’s a challenge.
“As for the event itself, the Brisbane Sporting Car Club do a fantastic job, but the town has proved to be the success story by the number of spectators who attend.
“It surprised me how so many people from a country town attended the last Wheels on Mary event and the Spectator Points themselves, so clearly, Gympie is the standout location for a Queensland round of the ARC.”
David Thompson
“We are certainly looking forward to the event after it was cancelled last year. I’ve got my son competing again and he might even be a little bit quicker than me.
“We have a fairly good classic field in there this year, it should be a fair old challenge and it’s on good roads, it’s an extremely well organised event and I’m looking forward to it.”
Lewis Bates
“I’m looking forward to Rally Queensland, hopefully we can get a strong result and keep the momentum going.
“We had a good result there back in 2021. It’s going to be a close battle as there are plenty of fast people, and we are at the point where we can’t afford to make any mistakes because they are very costly there, but we are looking forward to it.”
Nathan Quinn
“Queensland is probably one of my stronger events, it’s going to be a level playing field and it’s been good to me in the past.
“Hopefully we can maintain the momentum and improve my preparation.”
Harry Bates
“We are feeling very good, it’s an amazing event and the roads up there are great.
“It was such a shame that we didn’t end up getting to compete with the weather they had last year, but I’m looking forward to getting back there.
“Fingers crossed for some amazing Queensland weather; I just can’t wait to get going.”
Nathan Stokes
“I have never competed at Rally Queensland before, but I have only heard good things from others.
“I haven’t done a huge amount of gravel rally in the past either, so I am looking forward to the challenge of further transitioning from tarmac.
“While I don’t know what Queensland holds; we are looking forward to it because we are Brisbane based so it will be our home event – we will have heaps of family around and they won’t have to travel this time, so I can’t wait.”
Simon Jansen
“We have always loved Rally Queensland, we have been doing it for many years now and it has always been nice to get away from the Tasmanian winter.
“There are some great people involved and it is just a brilliant event overall. It made us want to keep coming back.
“We had a really good result last time out, it was a good clean event with no mistakes and we are now looking at Rally Queensland to see what we can do with the championship and get a result.
“We have our service crew flying up from Tasmania and they are looking forward to getting out of the cold winter and into the Gympie sun.”
