Inaugural Great Alpine Rally Delivers
The Australian Tarmac Rally Championship ventured to a new location to kick-off its 2026 championship, Falls Creek in Victoria.
Despite taking place on March 28-29 less than a month after the end of summer, there was some lights snow on recce day. Fortunately this cleared for the rally itself and made for an incredibly picturesque backdrop to a very successful event.
Across the two days of competitive running competitors competed across 24 stages and an impressive 300 competitive kilometres.
The atmosphere and buzz leading into and during the event had not been felt in many years.
The event itself was won by Michael Harding and James Thornburn in their Subaru WRX STI, they were the fastest and most consistent throughout the rally and claimed victory by nearly two minutes.
Jonathan Moir and Darragh Lynch in an old-school Ford Escort Mk2 came home in second, officially 1m 54.2s back, with Justin Waterhouse and Adrian Bryant rounding out the podium in their Mitsubishi Evo X.
As always in ATR there were multiple classes, the win in Rally Challenge went the way of Ben Watkins and Peter Hellwig in their Subaru WRX STI, beating David Currow and Kate O’Donnell in a Fiat AC.
As well as taking outright honours, Harding and Thornburn claimed the Modern Super Rally class ahead of Dean Lillie and Samantha Stevens, with Nissan R35 owners Jason Wright and Fiona Wright rounding out the top three.
Modern AWD was a closely fought affair even heading into to the final stage of the event. Craig and Jasmine Haysman prevailed driving a Subaru WRX STI. They pipped Audi TT drivers Jason Killen and Andrew Thompson, as well as Greg and Rhonda Burrowes in a GR Yaris,.
Driving a Porsche Cayman GTS, Modern 2WD was won by Laura Rogers and Gavin Rogers, Early Modern AWD went to Justin Waterhouse and Adrian Bryant and Early Modern 2WD was won by David Blunden and Greg McDonald. Peter Gluskie and Samantha Winter took the Classic category in a BMW E30.
The very first Great Alpine Rally was a huge success and will be remembered for years to come.
The next round of the ATR season is the Snowy River Sprint from September 12–13, entries open May 1.
