Motorsport fans will be closely watching the performance of the top six championship drivers: New Zealand champion Hayden Paddon, Ben Hunt, Robbie Stokes, Jack Hawkeswood and Emma Gilmour.
Christchurch-based Stokes was leading the championship.
But Southern Lights Rally organiser Paul Fallon believed there would also be plenty of excitement happening further down the seeding order between the experienced and up-and-coming drivers.
"There’s a young fellow called Max Casey that’s actually doing the very first event — he’s 16 years old and lives in Cromwell."
Up to 64 drivers will launch themselves into the 11.8km course of stage one in one-minute intervals on the world’s most southern championship rally, covering 157km of gravel roads, for the first time in about 20 years.
Fallon said he was very grateful for the support from the Southland community who had got behind the event — especially outlying townships like Tuatapere and Winton.
"All of those race teams will turn up at Winton twice during the course of Saturday and the service crews will be hanging around all day, or half the day in Winton, then they all move off to Tuatapere."
While 33km of the race will happen at a special stage being hosted at Teretonga Park, the remainder will be on Southland’s gravel roads.
The wide variance of gravel road base and loading will provide a great challenge for the competitors.
"It is part of the challenge and that’s what makes the drivers quite excited about what they do," Fallon said.
"It’s very different to circuit racing, where they’re going around and around and around the same circuit and the conditions don’t change."
Drivers will assess the roads at slow speed on Thursday morning.
"We’ll have a convoy of pretty much 60 cars.
"We’ll be driving over the roads just looking at them and writing notes about the condition of the roads.
"Then on Friday morning, they go out and do the other six roads, so that’ll take them till about midday on Friday before they actually didn’t have to do the ceremonial start on Friday night and then go up to the first stage."
Drivers would also be watching the weather and their position on the road.
He expected road conditions would change dramatically from when the pole-position driver, New Zealand champion Hayden Paddon, ripped over it, until the 64th driver traverses the course.
Predicting what the course was like by the time their turn came to drive it was all part of the challenge and developing their strategy, he said.
Entries were divided into two sections — 28 championship drivers and 26 allcomers — with the starting order running from fastest to slowest.
Fallon said the race had received great support in the allcomers field from Otago and Southland drivers.
The Southern Lights Rally is round three of the six-round New Zealand championship with other rounds held in Otago and Canterbury.
By Toni McDonald
