Reigning PCWRC champion, Toshi Arai will also be one of the front-runners, along with Nutahara, as will Aki Teiskonen, Gabriel Pozzo, Mirco Baldacci and Leszek Kuzaj.
At the OMV CEE team, Yassen Popov returns to the fold after his outing with the squad at the season opening Rallye Monte Carlo. The Bulgarian rally champion is determined to finish this time and try and score points.
“We’ve got a perfect car and we know that we can keep up with the front runners’ in this class,” said Popov. “Australia is un-chartered territory, of course, but we are well prepared and looking forward to this challenge.”
Nigel Heath had been due to take part in Oz - however, he has had to pull out due to personal reasons.
Other significant entries:
Around 58 crews will take part in the Rally Australia, a similar amount
roughly speaking as to that which competed in Sweden [67], Cyprus [50] and Monte Carlo [51] - only 10, however, will be in WRC cars.
There will be over 20 Australians in action for the home crowd to cheer on, most noticeably of course, SWRT number two driver,
Chris Atkinson and Dean Herridge. Robert Whyatt and Tolley Challis will also take part - they have contested every Telstra Rally Australia for the last 19 years, stretching all the way back to 1988.
Route:
The route is virtually identical to last year and is again based around the riverside service park in Perth's Langley Park. The action opens at the city's Gloucester Park trotting track on Thursday evening with two passes over a spectacular super special stage, which is repeated at the end of Friday and Saturday's competition.
Friday's opening leg takes competitors south of Perth for a group of stages clustered around the town of Dwellingup.
Saturday's route heads south-east to the Bannister stages, formerly known as Bunnings, where the famous roller coaster jumps and watersplash provide some of the season's most dramatic images. Both days end with a short loop of tests east of Perth before the Gloucester Park stages.
