What's going on with rallying in WA?

[RaceTime]

Just received the following email - can anyone shed any light on what is going on over in WA?

WACC FOREST RALLY – STATEMENT FROM ESSENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS

Essential Communications Advertising PR Marketing Support Pty Ltd has officially resigned the West Australian Car Club Forest Rally account. Essential Communications is no longer associated with promotion or publicity of the rally or any event associated with it.

[RaceTime]

Further to this - the BBC in the UK is reporting this morning that Rally Australia in September is looking like coming very close to being dropped from the World Rally Champ calendar this year because if 'internal difficulties' between the owners of the event (Tourism WA) and the new organisers.

[Mr Squiggle]

Same thing just popped up on the daily Autosport bulletins. They are saying that Rally Oz might not happen this year due to "problems with the organisers".

What the?!?............

[RaceTime]

There is a thread over in the Rallying forum about this but- at this stage - it all appears to be speculation.

If I get further info will pass it on.

From AUTOSPORT

Mosley confirms Rally Australia threat

FIA president says round is in danger

Mosley says Rally Australia could lose its WRC status

The president of world motorsport's governing body, Max Mosley, has confirmed that Rally Australia will be removed from this year's World Rally Championship – unless the event's commercial and sporting departments reach agreement in the next few weeks.

As revealed on autosport.com this morning, the event – one of the highest-rated on the WRC schedule – faces the axe from its 2003 slot, because of continuing disputes between its owner, the Western Australia Tourism Commission, and the body of officials who run the rally.

Rally Australia organisers have been swift to deny the story, and they quickly issued a release in which world rallying's media rights owner, International Sportsworld Communicators boss David Richards, indicated that he was unaware of any potential problems. But Mosley told autosport.com this afternoon that the media side of the event was not the issue placing it under threat.

"The difficulty is that this is not a commercial problem," said Mosley. "It's a sporting one. And we [the FIA] are the sporting authority. We know that there appears to be a real problem between the sporting and commercial people on Rally Australia. We've known about this since the World Motor Sport Council met in December. But it decided not to put an asterisk against the event's position in the 2003 calendar, and to instead send a high-ranking FIA official as an envoy, to report back on the situation.

[William Dale Jr]

Well if Max says there's a good chance of RA being dropped, then it must be true. I don't doubt that Gerry Connolly's departure from the position of Clerk of the Course had something to do with this.

While Mosely also said that Rally Australia could continue even if it wasn't a round of the WRC, but if the two main players in the event can't agree on terms, where does that leave us?

[The Tool Man]

Lost ALL Interest in Rally when they took away the rally of Coffs Harbour.