This weekend, Shane van Gisbergen ventures into the Canberra forests to contest his first Australian Rally Championship round.
The Kiwi ace currently leading the Repco Supercars Championship after a clean-sweep of proceedings in Tasmania, but he’ll swap the tarmac for dirt this weekend piloting a Red Bull Skoda Fabia R5 in the National Capital Rally.
However, there are a few rally drivers who have gone the other way, so here are three instances where this has taken place.
COLIN BOND
Bond started off in Hillclimbs before transitioning to rallying where he competed in Isuzu Bellets and Mitsubishi Lancers prior to being chosen to join the Holden Dealer Team in 1969 to partner Tony Roberts in what was a winning campaign.
Bond led the HDT’s rallying program winning three Australian Rally Championships in a row betwinn 1970 and 1972, while also circuit racing alongside Peter Brock.
Bond added another ARC title in 1974 and the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1975 for HDT before joining Allan Moffat at Ford for a dominating 1977 ATCC season.
With Ford, he led its rallying program in the BDA Escorts where he was joined by Greg Carr and ran the marque’s Repco Reliability Trial assault in Ford Cortinas, which suffered from rushed preparations.
Once the Ford deal ended in the early 1980s, Bond only dabbled in rallying as touring cars took precedence until he retired in 1994.
GEORGE FURY
Hungarian born, Fury was an ace on both dirt and tarmac in the various Datsuns throughout the peak of Australian rallying in the 1970s.
Winner of the prestigious Southern Cross Rally and the Australian Rally Championship twice, at the turn of the new decade Datsun management decided to go circuit racing with the Bluebird, the program orchestrated by Howard Marsden.
Fury was carried across to the touring car program where under Fred Gibson’s tuition he made the transition and in just his second season came runner up due to the Datsun team not entering.
Fury nearly won the title again in 1986 for the rebranded Nissan factory team racing its DR30 Skyline RS, but was pipped by Kiwi Robbie Francevic.
Overtaken by young gun Glenn Seton followed by the inclusion of Jim Richards and emergence of Mark Skaife, Fury transitioned out of the Nissan team. He reunited with Seton in 1990 for a final fling as part of his Peter Jackson Ford Sierra squad, but failed to return to the top level.
He returned to rallying in 1990 and won the first two events on the ARC calendar, finishing his career on a high.
SUBARU RALLY STARS
To complete the package is the factory backed Bathurst 12 Hour attack organised by Subaru Australia spearheaded by rally drivers Cody Crocker, Chris Atkinson and Dean Herridge.
A two-car Subaru Impreza WRX STI attack on the Mountain, the rally stars weren’t considered favourites compared to teammates Neil Crompton, Grant Denyer and Chris Alajajian, however it was the dirt trio who starred.
Finishing on the podium on the same lap as the race winning BMW 335i upheld Subaru’s honour in the race, with Herridge being a regular competitor in the event as a privateer through Maximum Motorsport.