The European Rally Championship has adjusted its calendar in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Azores Rally and Cyprus Rally now running on new dates later in the season.
Azores, which was originally set to be the season opener later this month, was postponed last week after a meeting by the Council of the government of the mid-Atlantic archipelago recommended all events in March to be postponed.
The rally organizer Grupo Desportivo Comercial responded by announcing a postponement and putting forward a new date for the rally to the FIA. That has been approved, and the 55th running of the event will take place on September 17-19.
As a result, Cyprus Rally has been moved back by a week from October 9-11 to October 16-18 to “allow all drivers and teams to contest both [rallies]”, given the time it takes the ship the cars back to Europe from the Azories.
The ERC season will therefore now start with the Canary Islands Rally, which is also located on an isolated archipelago in the Atlantic ocean, on May 7-9.
