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Rally Australia has moved its city racing location from Langley Park to Gloucester Park. There were a couple of reasons behind this, the biggest on being that this years Australian leg of the World Rally Championship was moved from November to September would have turned the venue into a quagmire… Apparently!
Funnily enough, I remember back when the event used to be held in September, and I know we did Langley then.
Another reason for the change of location could have come about because of the new “Single Service Park”.
The word from the hierarchy is, this is a cost saving for the competitors as they do not have to build new service centres every day.
Previously they have had a main service park at Langley, daily ones en-route Friday and Saturday, with the Super Special Stages held at the Sotico camp having its own large park.
Being forced to comply with the single service park ruling meant that rally organisers could no longer have the big service centre 3Km from the heart of Perth City. A central location was chosen in Jarrahdale.
Having a new venue in the city is not without its share of problems. Oh sure there are some fantastic things about it. From the punters point of view, the new course is spectacular. The views from the grandstands are even better than in previous years.
For us working on the event, having the officials carpark literally next to where we are working is a great joy. Previously we had to park on Ozone reserve and pretty much walk the full length of Langley to get to our duty. This meant carrying things like eskies were pretty much out of the question.
Unfortunately, some of the setups were not thought out very well. While nothing was really major, ie the teams and spectators were unaware, there were a few headaches for us behind the scenes.
Its a learning process I guess.
Jobs performed last night – Vehicle marshalling (Shakedown area), coordinating security in Parc ferme. Jobs not performed but dreamed about – Cutting the wire to the insanely Low Fidelity PA speaker in our area which was nothing but loud and annoying!
