The Confederation of African Countries in Motorsports (CACMs) meeting that took place in Abuja, Nigeria recently approved new changes for next year’s African Rally Championship (ARC).

The meeting was attended by among others, president of the Federation International Automobile, Jean Todt and FIA member countries from Africa including Rwanda, which was represented by the Rwanda Automobile Club (RAC) head, Christian Gakwaya.

According to the 2018 African National Calendar released after the CACMS meeting in Nigeria, Mountain Gorilla Rally will be the last ARC event scheduled on September 21-23, 2018.

Rally Bandama Cote D’ Ivoire will be the first ARC event of the season in February, followed by the Safari Rally of Kenya in March, York Rally in South Africa in April, Zambia International Rally in June, Pearl of Africa Rally in Uganda in July, Rally of Tanzania in August before the season concludes in Rwanda. The CACAMS meeting also made amendments in the statutes to extend the term of the current CACMS president Surinder Thathi by one year.

The meeting also appointed a Vice-President for CACMS from the French speaking region, and Alain Ambrosino from Cote D’Ivoire was unanimously elected for one year.

Among the new changes is, a new scoring system, free registration, closed routes and new points system.

Registration fee for ARC drivers has been completely scrapped and made free to all crews wishing to compete for the continental title; however, only drivers with homologated cars will be accepted.

The new point system will now consider 14 finishers instead of 10 as previously done and the margin between points has been reduced.

The new points from highest to lowest a driver can get in a particular race, are; 25, 21, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Championship points will be awarded for the actual position of the competitor in an event.

Speaking to Times Sport, Gakwaya noted that the new scoring system means more drivers will have higher chances of winning the ARC title than it has been previously.

"The closed roads aspects will require us to move the rally to places where we can close roads during the entire event. For the local drivers, yes, it will help them to compete for the championship and FIA ranking,” he said.

Closed routes were most emphasized and a must for all ARC events, starting in 2018 and also the penalty for deviation from a race route has been reduced from ten to five minutes.

Another change is that, restart after retirement on day one was permitted but crews will not be classified on the final results.

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