Rally Indonesia cancelled, APRC reduced to six rounds

26th August 2010

By Giles Wade

Next month’s Rally Indonesia has been cancelled and will not be replaced, reducing this year’s Asia-Pacific Rally Championship to a six-round series.

The event’s hopes of running as a World Rally Championship candidate event had already been ended after the organisers decided – with next year’s WRC calendar already agreed – there would be no point in the investment required to establish and run the event to WRC standards. But the rally, which had been scheduled to run on September 25/26 in South Sulawesi, has now been cancelled altogether. This is the first time since 1999 that Rally Indonesia hasn’t run.

The decision to can Indonesia coincides with the start of this weekend’s fifth APRC round, the New Caledonia Rally. This event is regularly one of the most poorly supported rounds of the series, with Indonesian driver Rifat Sungkar the leading entry in New Caledonia this weekend. Ironically, the reason the APRC’s leading lights stay away is because of the tight shipping schedules to get out of Noumea, New Caledonia’s base, and up to Indonesia.

The APRC will now conclude with a sixth round, the China Rally, in November.