Highlights
The 1981 season was dominated by Geoff Portman and Ross Runnalls. They won both the Australian Rally Championship (in a Datsun Stanza) and the Victorian Rally Championship (in the Autosport Datsun 200B). Then to cap it off they also won the inaugural Victorian Trials Championship in their private Datsun 1600.
The VRC was, for the second year, made up entirely of Special Stage events but this year all events adopted “Elapsed Timing”.
This year saw the cessation of the Victorian Clubman Series as a result of dwindling numbers of entries in some VCS and VRC events. It seemed that many club level series were drawing competitors from these state level series. A Clubman award was therefore introduced into the VRC.
With the VRC now entirely special stage events, the Victorian Trials Championship (the name had previously been used for the VRC prior to 1972) was introduced with an emphasis on navigation and sometimes more challenging road conditions. As part of the VTC, the George Derrick Memorial Trial turned out to indeed be memorable for competitors – the full story is worth reading.
Five club level series were contested, with the ANZ Bank Rally Series, having run for only two years, no longer continuing. In addition to events that were part of a series and numerous club events, there were a number of “Open” events: the COCC Ready Plan Rally, the North Eastern Rally, two CCRMIT Rallysprints and one MUCC Rallysprint.
For some excellent photos from 1981, select the Calendar item on the left to see the 1981 calendar published by the Victorian Rally Association.
Australian Rally Championship
Victoria conducted two rounds of the Australian Rally Championship in 1981, the Akademos Rally (Round 4) and the Alpine Rally in November (Round 5). Both Victorian rounds were won by Portman and Runnalls in the factory Stanza, the Alpine by 9 minutes ahead of team mates Fury and Suffern. They also won rounds in Queensland and NSW, convincingly winning the championship. It was the last year that the Nissan entered the ARC, having won seven titles across eight years (although Dunkerton’s win in 1975 was not in a factory Datsun).
The Akademos was held on 29 May. Directed by David McKenzie, it was the first ARC event to use a pre-cursor of A-A timing, a result of David competing with Simon Crane in the 1980 WRC Motogard Rally in New Zealand. The aim was to make spectating a better experience by keeping the leading cars at close to 2 minute intervals. It started in Melbourne and finished in Sale.
