A five-day inspection that could end America's 39-year wait for a World Rally Championship round begins this weekend. A delegation of FIA and WRC Promoter officials touches down in Tennessee and eastern Kentucky from Saturday 13 June to walk the proposed stages, host cities, service parks and fan zones behind a bid to put the United States back on the calendar for the first time since 1988.
It is the most concrete step yet in a campaign that has run for years in the background of the championship — and the drivers, for once, are unanimous.
"The United States represents one of the most important growth opportunities for the FIA World Rally Championship," FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem said ahead of the visit. "It is a nation where motorsport is part of the cultural DNA, with world-class domestic championships and a rapidly growing appetite for global competition. Now is the time to build on that momentum with this significant development."
The man charged with making it happen is Rally United States promoter Matt Crews, who built the Music City Grand Prix that took IndyCar to the streets of Nashville in 2021. He frames the WRC project as the same fight, fought again.
"I took a huge amount of pride from organising the Music City Grand Prix. It will be the same story with Rally United States," Crews said. "The cooperation from right across the global rally community, from all the series stakeholders, has been outstanding. We're all pulling in the same direction towards a WRC calendar slot. This event is something which has been talked about for a while, but now is very much time for action."
Among the competitors, the support is loudest from those who have actually raced in America. Toyota's Oliver Solberg, this year's Monte Carlo Rally winner, spent half a season contesting the ARA National Championship with Subaru in 2019.
"I think it's fantastic. I did rallying in America for half a year and, for me, it's one of the coolest, best places to go rallying in the world," Solberg told DirtFish. "I mean, they have some beautiful stages out there and a lot of passionate fans — a lot of Subaru fans, a lot of Japanese brand fans, which I think we are really missing out on. I think it's absolutely fantastic."
M-Sport Ford's Josh McErlean, another ARA veteran, was blunt about the sporting case. "The WRC has to go to the States," he said. "I've done a few rallies out there and it's very impressive. I did Olympus and Tennessee. I think that's one of the talked about areas. The stages out there are really demanding — actually, quite technical like Rally Japan on gravel. But yeah, the people over there need to see proper rallying."
Adrien Fourmaux, who has visited the DirtFish rally school in Washington state, agreed the championship belonged there, with a caveat about presentation. "For me, America deserves to be in the championship. It can be a very good event," he said. "Maybe the profile needs to be a bit different to suit the American people and the big show. But it's a good idea. It's a great idea. It's a good thing."
The geography being inspected is part of the pitch. The corridor running from the Great Smoky Mountains through river gorges to the Cumberland Plateau offers the kind of backdrop the WRC's coverage — which reaches around 100 million viewers per rally — trades on, including the famed 18km, 318-turn Tail of the Dragon. The gravel stages planned for the two states are designed to be a genuine sporting test rather than a scenic procession.
There is hard industrial logic underneath the romance. Tennessee and Kentucky have become America's automotive heartland, employing roughly 700,000 people in the sector. Toyota's Kentucky plant is the manufacturer's largest in the world, Ford has committed $5.6 billion to its Tennessee Truck Plant, and WRC control-tyre supplier Hankook runs its American headquarters out of Nashville with a plant in Clarksville.
"We have such committed partners right across Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, and they're committed because they can see the economic benefit and visibility a WRC event brings to the region," Crews said.
---
*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/ogier-solberg-back-wrc-us-return-as-fia-inspects-stages). Visit for full coverage.*
