East Coast Classic Rally Series – Including Season Review Video
2018 was a big year for Classic Rallying in Australia with the introduction of the East Coast Classic Rally Series (ECCRS). More than 60 classic cars turned out during the year to support this great initiative, organised by Rally NSW.
There were six rounds of the series to make up the 2018 season and The Caves Classic in Oberon was the first rally to get the series started. The second round ventured south of the border into Victoria for the Mitta Mountain Rally. The NSW town of Kyogle in the north of the state would host round three for the Border Ranges Rally and then the classic rally teams would head to the NSW south coast for a very dusty Rally of the Bay. Bathurst would be the destination for round five and the final round was the very wet Monaro Stages Rally, based out of Cooma.
The Classic events were well supported throughout the year and Tom Dermody in a Ford Escort RS1800 and Gary Yeomans in a Datsun 1600 would compete at every one of the six events in the series. This support was well rewarded with Dermody and co-driver Eoin Moynihan winning the series. Yeomans and co-driver Kam Baker were the runners up.
Third in the ECCRS was Clay Badenoch and Catriona Kelly in a Toyota Celica RA40.
Various ECCRS events during the year saw other notable names show up in Classic cars including:
– Multiple Australian Rally Champions Neal Bates and Coral Taylor in a Toyota Celica;
– 2017 Alpine Rally winners Ben Barker and Damien Long in a BMW;
– 2016 Silver Fern Rally winner Derek Ayson from New Zealand in an Escort;
– 2015 Alpine Rally Winner Jack Monkhouse in a Datsun 180B;
– 2018 Classic Outback Trial winners Andrew and David Travis in a Nissan Gazelle; and
– 2017 Australian Rally Champion Nathan Quinn in a Mazda RX2.
