With the host city, format/route and March 12-13, 2022, weekend dates for its new Hamilton-based Targa Bambina event now confirmed, Ultimate Rally Group boss Peter Martin says he hopes that 2022 is finally the year in which Kiwis can finally emerge from the shadow of the COVD-19 Coronavirus and return to ‘some sort of normality’
What this ‘new normality’ looks like, he admits, is still very much a work in progress, though Martin says he and his team at the Drury, Auckland-based Ultimate Rally Group, are doing everything they can to instil confidence back into former event regulars as well as a new generation of prospective first timers alike.
“This is why,” he explains, “we’re kicking off our year with a our new-look Bambina event over the March 12-13 weekend.
“It’s a two-day event based out of Hamilton that has a mixture of well-known roads from previous Targa Rotorua events as well as a number of new roads that have not been used in this configuration before.
“With a total of 260kms special stages distance but only 345kms of touring between the stages we can start a little later and finish a little earlier than we would normally so that our competitors can work their way back into the swing of things gradually, given that it will have been nearly a year since many have done an actual event.”
As well as providing New Zealand’s tarmac rally specialists an opportunity to ‘get their eye in’ early in the year, the new Targa Bambina event will also carry points for a new Tarmac Rally Championship series to help focus both prospective entrant and fan interest on the three separate Targa events Martin and his Ultimate Rally Group intend to run in 2022.
The 2022 AASA Tarmac Rally Championship will consist of nine single day rounds, two at the two-day Targa Bambina (Hamilton, North Island, March 12-13), all five at the re-scheduled 2021Targa New Zealand (New Plymouth-to Havelock North, North Island) event now set to run over a slightly modified course between the 25th and 29th of May 2022, and the final two at the all-new, this time Nelson-based, two-day Targa South Island event planed for the October 22-23 2022 (Labour) weekend.
Title sponsor for the new NZ championship series is the Australasian Auto Sport Alliance, the 100% New Zealand-owned and operated agency of independent Australian motorsport permitting and licence issuing authority the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance.
With fellow Auckland-based independent motorsport event promotor, Dr Jacob Simonsen, Martin was instrumental in getting an alternative permitting and licensing body to long-time incumbent MotorSport NZ up and running here and has successfully used the AASA as his exclusive event permitting and competitor and vehicle licensing partner on what Targa events, he has been able to run since the first COVID-19 Lockdown threw a spanner in the works back in March 2020.
Finally, after being forced – by the NZ Government’s initial COVID-19 border closure this time – to cancel the biennial 2020 Silver Fern (International 2WD Marathon gravel) Rally in the North Island, Peter Martiin also confirmed this week that he is forging ahead with plans to hold the next – South Island – event in November next year (2022)
For more information go to www.targa.co.nz or check out the Targa NZ page on Facebook.
For more information on the NZ biennial Silver Fern Rally go to www.silverfernrally.co.nz or check out the Silver Fern Rally page on Facebook.
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