Harry Bates and Coral Taylor have claimed back-to-back Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championships, with victory at the 2024 Buckby Motors Rally Tasmania by 13 seconds ahead of their closest competitors.

With nine championships between the two – Bates with three and Taylor with six – the Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia team built themselves a dominant lead from Saturday to clinch the Possum Bourne Memorial Trophy with 398 Championship points.

“Three Championships feels very special, it’s almost surreal the sort of names you’re up there with once you’ve got three,” Bates said.

“It’s been an incredible year, thank you to my amazing team, thanks to Coral Taylor for doing such a great job in the car, and we’re very excited for 2025.”

Behind the 2024 Champions, the battle for the runner-up place came down to the wire between Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin, and Tasmanian Eddie Maguire with co-driver Zak Brakey. The Toyota GR Yaris of Lewis came out on top for the rally in 2nd, and victory in the Galvaniize Insurance Power Stage, but Eddie Maguire would eventually end the season as runner-up to Harry Bates in the title race.

Maguire also rounded out his and Brakey’s weekend with third overall on home soil, finishing as the top Tasmanians outright.

View the day’s standings at the Subaru Results Hub.

During Sunday’s opening three stages, it was Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia pairing Lewis Bates and McLoughlin who were fastest, with Harry Bates and Taylor trailing by less than a second across SS11 to SS13. Despite this, they were able to firmly maintain their outright first place position.

With Scott Pedder and Glenn Macneall’s retirement from Tasmania due to radiator damage on Saturday, this allowed Alex Rullo and co-driver Steve Glenney to inch into a top three position in each stage and onto the last podium place for the Buckby Motors Rally Tasmania.

The IntelliSpatial Fleetcare Racing Hyundai i20 Rally2 continued their fight with local driver Maguire and Brakey, only a minute separating the two crews in the outright standings as they headed into the final stages of the 2024 season. Rullo suffered turbo boost issues on the final stage, and limped home dramatically down on power.

In the MainFix Production Cup, Clayton Hoy and Erin Kelly continued their commanding pace into Sunday to also finish well inside the outright top ten. The Mitsubishi crew were fastest in the first two stages on Sunday, but lost time in SS13 and finished second to Bodie Reading and Mark Young. Although they lost some time, Hoy and Kelly had a lengthy lead from their closest competitors in the MainFix Production Cup and clinched rally win for the class. Fellow Tasmanians Aidan Peterson and Mitch Newton joined the final step on the podium to be third in Production Cup.

Reading and Young, after a consistent showing on home soil, clinched back-to-back MainFix Production Cup titles to overtake Molly Taylor and Andy Sarandis in the points standings for the season.

In the Junior Cup, Victorians Mitch Garrad and Taylah Murphy built themselves a one-minute buffer between their ARC Junior Cup competitors in the early stages of Sunday. With title rivals Jaidyn and Lucy Gluskie out of contention, it was left to Molly Spalding and Matthew Dillon to claim runner-up honours for the weekend.

Garrad and Murphy were victorious for the season, victorious as 2024 ARC Junior Cup winners.

In the Trenching Systems Australia 2WD Classic Cup, Jesse Robison and Troy Hutchins came out the gates early to claim SS11 and SS12, but with Jack Monkhouse and Neill Woolley’s major lead from Saturday, the PWS Pipeline and Civil team were able to keep hold of their Cup victory for 2024. Robison and Hutchins finished the weekend as 2WD Classic Cup runners-up, with Tony Oates and Niamh Nairn rounding out the podium.

For the season, fifth in 2WD Classic Cup in Tasmania was enough for Peter Dimmock and Paul Bennett to win the season ahead of Dave Thompson and Matthew Sanders.

The sole entries in both the ARC 4WD Classic Cup and Subaru WRX Challenge retired early on Saturday but rejoined in the latter parts of the day. Subaru WRX Challenge Cup leaders Glenn Brinkman and Scott Beckwith finished in 29th as the sole WRX Challenge entry, claiming the season crown in the process.

As the season comes to a close, the Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship will begin in 2025 with Rally of Canberra on March 21-23. The season will have six rounds scheduled and featured at familiar venues.