The 2024 National Rally Championship will be introduced to the new points-scoring system starting with the traditional season opener in Western Uganda; the Mbarara Rally.
The new points structure is anticipated to lead to more competitiveness.
With the new system, the sliding scale from previous seasons has been slashed by half. The new slides prove to create a much closer gap compared to the previous.
There will also be points to score in the power stage.
The power stage is an inspiration from the World Rally Championship which was later introduced into the Africa Rally Championship and encouraged for national rallies.
“We revised the point system, to bring it up to speed with the new times of motorsport and make rally more competitive.
“We realised that the old system aided in early sealing of the championship. So we want to make it more close until the last events,” said Reynolds Kibira, Deputy Vice President – Technical.
Unlike before, where homologated and non-homologated cars scored differently, in the new system, there will be uniform points for both.
“We decided to harmonise and do away with the coefficient on points based on car homologation.
“The argument was that we have fewer cars which are FIA and this is a national rally. And the non-homologated cars were already disadvantaged in power.
“So based on that analogy, we decided to make it consistent for everybody with the exception of the Pearl of Africa Rally,” he added.
Over 30 crews will be taking part in the season-opening event this weekend.
They will cover nine stages with a total competitive distance of 179.16 kilometres in the two days.