In an exciting move, NASA Rally Sport announces that Rallye de Charlevoix will be part of the Atlantic Rally Cup in 2010. Rallye de Charlevoix, a legendary event with an impressive FIA history, returned from a short hiatus with a fresh organizing team this year.

‘It’s going to be fantastic,’ says Anders Green, a NASA Rally Sport Director. ‘I went up there this year to observe the event. They have a great, new organizing team, lead by Emilie Fortin, who is very energetic and is backed up by experienced leaders in the sport like Eric Tremblay. The fans they have up there will brave any weather to come out and watch. I hiked past a mile and a half of cars to get to the La Pax spectator area after sixteen inches of snow fell the day before!’

Charlevoix, which will be the final event of the 2010 Atlantic Rally Cup, usually has snow but it has been a gravel rally some years. This unpredictability adds to the challenge of conquering the stages. Geographically, the event is less than two hours northeast of Montreal. This puts the event well within a typical travel distance for many competitors. Despite being in Canada the event is actually closer for some competitors than other events in the Atlantic Rally Cup—Rallye De Charlevoix is less than a ten hour tow from New York City. The stages are classic tight and twisty forest roads that wind through huge pines, with some stages reaching twenty miles in length.

Andrew Havas, of Team Havspeed/Orange Energy, entered Rally de Charlevoix this year. ‘Rallying in Canada is awesome and you won’t find more passionate fans of rally anywhere in the world. In previous years, Charlevoix was officially observed by the FIA as a potential WRC round, so there can be no doubt as to the quality of the stages. They are simply awesome. Adding Charlevoix’s classic stages to the amazing tarmac at Rally Tennessee, the jumps and night running at Black River Stages in New York, and the mountain gravel of Rally West Virginia, it’s clear that the Atlantic Rally Cup has the best variety, and the best depth of proper stages on the East Coast.’

The Atlantic Rally Cup, now international in scope, consists of six rallies for 2010, and the events span Florida to Quebec. The competition heats up this year as the classes have been reduced to just two: two wheel drive and all wheel drive. This means that everyone will need to drive harder to fend off the larger number of people they are now racing against. The events in the U.S. are sanctioned by NASA Rally Sport, while the Canadian event is sanctioned by the Canadian Association of Rally Sport, under FIA jurisdiction.

Preparations for the 2010 season have begun and entries are already flooding in to Sandblast Rally in South Carolina. The first stop on the tour gets started on February 6th. More information on event schedules and car preparation rules is available on NASARallySport.com. NASA Rally Sport, the oldest operating rally sanctioning body in the United States, organizes gravel and tarmac events across the country.