Preview: Telstra Rally Australia.

The Australian Rally is the thirteenth and penultimate round of the 2001 FIA World Rally Championship for Manufacturers, Drivers and Production Car Drivers. It is also the final qualifying event for the Teams' Cup. It is back to the gravel for this and the final event of the season. The stages are entirely held in forest areas to the east and south of Perth, in Western Australia, on surfaces which are covered with small bauxite stones which are cleaned away by the passing cars.

Only five of the seven registered teams will contest this event. With the exception of the continued rise of Peugeot in the Makes series, from fourth place to second, the two preceding asphalt rallies have done little to alter the status quo in the two main championship series. With only two rallies to run there are still six drivers able to win the FIA World Drivers' title and four different Manufacturers can win the Makes' series! This event will see the conclusion of the Team's Cup series, which this year has been held for the fourth and final time, for which two teams can win. The last few weeks have seen negotiations for the 2002 season. Movements already confirmed include Tommi Makinen to Subaru, Richard Burns to Peugeot, Markko Martin to Ford with Francois Delecour and Alister McRae to Mitsubishi.

Ford are currently running 1st in the championship with 83 points. All three drivers, Carlos Sainz, Colin McRae and Francois Delecour, are entered into the rally. McRae is the only driver with a statistical chance of becoming World Champion driver in Australia - should he win and Makinen not finish. His co-driver Nicky Grist celebrates his 40th birthday on the day of the start. It is to be the last rally with the team for Francois Delecour, who will not drive on the Network Q Rally, and will then go to Mitsubishi next year. Carlos Sainz celebrates his 150th entry on a World Championship rally. Only Juha Kankkunen has competed in more events. Sainz claims a most unusual success: he led outright on the very first stage of his first ever World Rally - Portugal in 1987! Australia is one of three events in the calendar he has not yet won outright.

Team Peugeot Total are on a late season charge! Peugeot's grand slam victories on all three clear asphalt rallies this year has launched them well into contention to retain their Manufacturers' Championship title. For this event they are the only factory to enter a four car team, the first time for the present generation Peugeot team. Marcus Gronholm and Harri Rovanpera are joined by Didier Auriol and Gilles Panizzi. Peugeot confirmed in Corsica that Richard Burns will replace Didier Auriol in 2002.

Mitsubishi are currently running 3rd in the championship and have a good chance of winning the drivers title with Tommi Makinen in equal first place with McRae going into Australia. Regular co-driver Risto Mannisenmaki is recovering in Marseilles after an operation to remove a chipped vertebrae bone, suffered in his stage five crash in Corsica. He is due to be repatriated this weekend. Tommi Makinen has selected Sebastian Lindholm's regular partner Timo Hantunen as his co-driver for the rest of the year. He and Tommi are no strangers: 12 years ago Timo co-drove for Tommi on the Swedish and the 1000 Lakes Rallies. Makinen will be driving a new car for the rally.

Subaru are feeling confident after their success in Corsica. Richard Burns is just 6 points behind the leaders of the drivers championship, meaning good results in Australia and the Network Q Rally could see him winning his first drivers title. Team director David Lapworth: "Our full attention now is on getting Richard the World Drivers' title. After Corsica the team is now very motivated. The cars have become very reliable recently and our finishing positions in Corsica were a big confidence boost." Solberg will be driving a new car at the rally.

Skoda will not be entering this event. Their current top priority is to negotiate next year's driver line-up. Decisions are expected before the Network Q Rally.

The 'select a starting position' experiment at Telstra Rally Australia is expected to disadvantage smaller teams like Hyundai. Commercial Director Steve Hardman: "We anticipate being forced to run this rally all the time at the front of the field. Conditions will be so unidentifiable that we have abandoned our planned pre-rally test session as this will be meaningless. This new idea helps the top teams but does no favours to the others." Ten years ago, at this event, a Korean car first appeared on a World Rally, Hyundai Lantras finishing first and second in their class.

Citroen are another team not entering this event. There has been no decision yet about their 2002 driver line-up, although it is confirmed the Xsara WR car will continue to be used in competition for the next two seasons with seven events in 2002 and the full season in 2003.

The eight remaining teams in the Teams' Cup are all due to be present. If Pasi Hagstrom's Toyota wins the category and Henrik Lundgaard's car does not finish, the two leading teams will finish on equal points so the series is expected to be won by the team with the higher overall placing this year. So far this was gained by Hagstrom's sixth place in Cyprus. Natalie Barratt has her fourth different co-driver this year - Roger Freeman. Last year Freeman was the co-driver to the series champion driver, Toshihiro Arai.

Note:
Since the experiment tried out here two years ago, the organisers have modified their 'select a running order' concept, designed to stop top drivers wanting to slow down on stages to gain a better restart position the next day. The results of this system will give useful guidance to organisers of many other rallies. 75 entries have been accepted out of the maximum allowed of 80.