Latvia’s European Rally Championship round Rally Liepāja has become the latest event to be considered for World Rally Championship inclusion.
The promoters of the the August 14-16 event have spoken to WRC Promoter managing director Oliver Ciesla to discuss the potential for Latvia to step up to the WRC.
The WRC calendar has been decimated by coronavirus, with five rounds canceled and two postponed, leaving just three confirmed calendar dates to run in Turkey, Germany and Japan. WRC Promoter and the FIA has made it clear it is looking at all possible rallies in Europe, with DirtFish being told “nothing is off the table” in the effort to bolster the second half of the season.
Rally Liepāja promoter RA Events’ Raimonds Strokśs said: “RA Events and WRC Promoter held the first round of talks on Monday, where we discussed multiple organisational aspects, terms and conditions and many other topics that need to be covered for Latvia to host a FIA World Rally Championship round alongside a round of the FIA ERC. I want to emphasize that this is just a first round of talks and neither of the parties are close to the final decisions on this matter.
“This will be a very challenging task as there is less than two months until the set event date. We will invite our partners – the Government of Latvia, our rally cities Liepāja and Talsi – to a discussion, in order to evaluate all the organisational workload, financial conditions and other aspects of the proposal. Only by working together and at a very rapid pace, can we find a solution to host a FIA WRC round in Latvia alongside the FIA ERC.”
Rally Liepāja’s rise has been rapid, having only run for the first time in 2013. WRC Promoter is known to be in discussions with multiple events, including Ypres, Estonia and the Canaries.
