The date for a warm-up Rally Japan event has been set-up for November 2019 ahead of its bid for FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) bid in 2020.
It looks promising now for Japan to make a return on the WRC calendar from 2020 onward – after 10-years of absence – with the confirmation of a non-championship warm-up event to be held in November, before the teams head for the 2019 finale in Australia.
The WRC Japan Round Bid Committee will trial few special stages planned for the 2020 event, while it will also give a chance to them to train the organisers and the marshals. The teams will get to inspect the service park and asphalt roads to used for the rally.
The rally is provisionally called ‘Central Rally Aichi 2019′ and will take place on November 9-10 in Nagakute city – which is 260 km off Tokyo. The plan is to run seven special stages covering about 123.26km in the Aichi Prefecture.
The country already successfully held a two-day candidate rally in 2018. The plans for the 2019 event was officially launched last weekend Motorsport Japan Festival in Tokyo in the presence of WRC’s Managing Director, Oliver Ciesla.
Also present was Rally Japan’s Koji Takahashi along with double PWRC champion Toshihiro Arai, who demonstrated Colin McRae’s 1997 Subaru Impreza WRC, while the Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Yaris WRC car was kept on display with the manufacturers’ trophy of 2018.