Rally Portugal – originally scheduled for next month – has been canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The organizer of the Matosinhos-based event made its announcement on Thursday, having been unable to make a late October date work.
Portugal is the first event to cancel, with Argentina and Italy both currently postponed.
A statement from the organizer said: “As a result of the global situation regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19), the 2020 Vodafone Rally de Portugal will not be organised on its initially scheduled date in May.
“The Automóvel Club de Portugal [Portuguese ASN] made significant efforts to run the event this year at the end of October.
“After a joint assessment together with our partners, the various municipalities, national authorities and sponsors, all health and safety conditions needed to run the WRC Vodafone Rally de Portugal in a safe way are not achievable given the unpredictable situation that we live in these days, and also the uncertainty of opening the national borders or airspace.
“Due to this critical situation the Automóvel Club de Portugal is forced to cancel the Portuguese round of the 2020 FIA World Rally Championship.
“The Automóvel Club de Portugal deeply regrets this decision. But it is the responsible decision bearing in mind the thousands of supporters, teams, municipalities, sponsors and all the people involved in the event, that was responsible in 2019 for an economic impact in the national economy of more than €142million.
“ACP has already applied for WRC Rally de Portugal to return to the 2021 FIA World Rally Championship in a May date.”
One of the founding rounds of the World Rally Championship in 1973, Portugal was a regular fixture on the calendar until the FIA’s rotation policy meant it ran as a round of the 2-Litre World Cup only in 1996.
The event fell from grace after a particularly wet 2001 edition, which asked further questions about the event’s security.
A move south to the Algarve returned Portugal to the WRC roster in 2007, and running out of Faro meant more manageable crowds than in the northern rallying heartland of Porto.
But, in 2015, the organizers did take the rally north again, basing it out of the coastal city of Matosinhos. The return of vast numbers of fans were controlled with stringent measures put into place by the Automóvel Club de Portugal, and the rally remains one of the WRC’s most popular.
