John Coyne returns to the ARA National Championship in 2024

The PCRS prepared Hyundai i20N Rally2 John Coyne will use for the remainder of the ARA Championship.

After a two-year break, while he focused on building up the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy, of which he is founder and patron, John Coyne will return to competition in the American Rally Association National Championship 2024.

The 73-year-old Irish driver, who resides in California, has been competing in rally for some 55 years, and will start his fourth season in the ARA National Championship in a Hyundai i20N Rally2 which will be run by PCRS Rallysport.

John will be accompanied throughout the season by Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy co-driver Eoin Treacy. Eoin has previously co-driven for John in WRC Mexico and Finland 2023 and will use the ARA championship to continue to build experience and further develop his co-driving skills.

John begins his season at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood in Potosi, Missouri on March 15th and 16th.

As Eoin had a prior commitment co-driving for his father in the Rally Costa Brava in Spain that weekend, Josh McErlean will stand in for this initial event. 

Josh, a Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy driver, will use this one-off appearance in the co-driver seat to expand his experience of all aspects of rallying, and to give John some real-time driving tuition. On his one previous event in the USA, Josh placed third overall and first RC2 in Olympus Rally 2021. He was outright fastest on the infamous Wildcat stage, in a Hyundai i20N R5. Since then, he has successfully built a career as an up-and-coming driving talent in the European and World Rally Championships.

The Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy, of which John Coyne is founder and patron, was established in 2019 to identify promising young Irish drivers and co-drivers, and to support them through rigorous training and experience programs, to develop the skills and discipline necessary to progress from the junior rallying ranks at home through to competing successfully at World Rally Championship level.