Ada River Rally 2026 Preview: Car 21, Blind Again, in the Noojee Forests
Seven days after the Classic Queensland Rally, we're back in the car. This Saturday, 22 August, is Draper's Civil Contracting Ada River Rally — a one-day gravel event out of the Noojee Heritage Centre in Gippsland, Victoria, run by the Western District Car Club through the renowned forests of the Latrobe State Forest region. It counts for three championships at once: the Victorian Rally Championship, the NSW Rally Championship and the East Coast Classic Rally Series.
The format
Eight special stages, roughly 180 competitive kilometres against about 136 km of liaison, split into three separately-scored heats — and, like Queensland last week, it's blind: fully route-charted with tulip diagrams and no reconnaissance. One official test session on the Friday, then Saturday is race day from 7am with the last cars home around 10pm.
The field
The seeded entry list is out: 36 crews, and the car numbers are the start order — cars away at two-minute intervals from 9:30, with the top three positions drawn by ballot. The pointy end is Victorian and NSW 4WD hardware: Richie Dalton's Yaris GR AP4 at car 1, Mitta Mountain Rally winner Danny Traverso at car 3 in the Evo 9, and a run of WRXs and Evos behind them. Further back it's proper East Coast Classic territory — Escort RS1800s, Datsun 1600s, a P510, a Peugeot 504 and the usual swarm of Hyundai Excels. Flash Motorsport's Jonathan Moir backs up from Classic Queensland too — as car 17, same number both weekends.
We start 21st, at 10:10, Chora/Ferrante in the Impreza, running P6 and Classic 4WD (C4). The full seeded entry list, spectator points and event guide are on the Ada River page.
What we're watching
Last week taught us exactly what blind roads give and take: our best stage came on the longest road, and the lesson of Bushnell II was not to over-trust a road you've only seen once. Ada River's heats run the same discipline — three scored chunks, so one scrappy heat doesn't have to define the day.
Results will be on the event page as soon as they're published after the finish.