The World Rally Championship (WRC) will hit New Zealand in 2022, after it was originally planned to return for 2020 following a ten-year hiatus.
With the event set to take place next September and October, Rally New Zealand Chairman Peter Johnston told SENZ mornings with Ian Smith his team worked extremely hard to secure a spot on the WRC calendar, after their plans in 2020 were interrupted due to the global pandemic.
“The rally will start on Thursday night, the big news is we’re going to have a super special stage in downtown Auckland … everyone in Auckland is going to have a spectacle right on their doorstep,” Johnston said.
“It is a huge relief, there has been a lot of hard work, obviously a huge disappointment in 2020 when we were five months into the project and had all of our staff employed and ready to go and then we had to cancel because of the first lot of covid.
“Then we had to lick our wounds, get back on the horse, start riding hard, and start campaigning to get the event back in New Zealand for 2022.
“(It's been) a lot of hard work, I’ve got a fabulous team around me and I am very fortunate to have these people that work so hard and we’ve been able to get this project across the line.”
Johnston told SENZ the event will be great to showcase the country of New Zealand, and is expecting a substantial viewership of the event.
“Just to put it into context … the live TV will go out to 150 countries,” Johnston said.
“We’ve got 800 million viewers, we think (we will get) between two to five thousand actual spectators to come to New Zealand, we will have 200 international media people at our event, covering the event, it’s great for New Zealand, it showcases our country, it’s great for New Zealand Motorsport.”
The event is expected to take place September 29.