1983 Australian Rally Championship
The 1983 Australian Rally Championship was a series of four rallying events held across Australia. It was the 16th season in the history of the competition.
Ross Dunkerton won the 1983 Drivers Championship and Geoff Jones took out the navigators honours for the year.
Season review
The 16th Australian Rally Championship was held over four events across Australia, the season consisting of one event each for Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. With the series being reduced to four events for the year, the field split between two categories with the introduction of Group A cars and the lack of any factory backed teams, things did not look promising. This was compounded when the second round in Queensland was postponed twice due to inclement weather. However it was an interesting and hard fought season with Dunkerton taking out his fifth title and using three different cars and two navigators to do so. The navigator's title went to Geoff Jones who was with runner up to the driver's title Peter Johnson for all four events.The Rallies
The five events of the 1983 season were as follows.Round | Rally | Date |
1 | The Sunday Times Safari | 4–5 June 1983 |
2 | The James Hardie National Rally | 16–17 July 1983 |
3 | Dunlop 2GO Rally | 13–14 August 1983 |
4 | The Enka-Fill Alpine Rally | 19–20 November 1983 |
Round One – The Sunday Times Safari
Group APosition | Driver | Navigator | Car | Penalties |
1 | Chris Brown | Noel Richards | Holden Commodore SS | 251.48 |
2 | Caroline O’Shannesy | Jill Davies | Fiat 131 Superbrava | 322.05 |
Round Two – The James Hardie National Rally
Group APosition | Driver | Navigator | Car | Penalties |
1 | Peter Johnson | Geoff Jones | Mazda RX-7 | |
2 | Peter Lockhart | John Hall | Isuzu Gemini PF50 |
Round Three – The Dunlop 2GO Rally
Group APosition | Driver | Navigator | Car | Penalties |
1 | Peter Johnson | Geoff Jones | Mazda RX-7 | 198.36 |
2 | Russell Worthington | Simon Kabel | Mazda 626 | 199.30 |