Richie Dalton

Don’t let the EOI form fool you. Sydney-based Irishman Richie Dalton is anything but new to Australian rallying. The Shamrock Motorsport team principal has been a fixture of the NSW and national rally scene for years, with a career-best ARC second place, a state championship and a string of regional wins to his name.

Richie’s biggest day in the ARC came at the 2022 Adelaide Hills Rally, where he and long-time co-driver Dale Moscatt took outright second behind Lewis Bates, winning two stages outright on a wet Sunday morning, beating both factory Toyota Yaris’s of Lewis and Harry Bates in the process. The result lifted him to third overall in the 2022 ARC and confirmed him as a genuine threat to the factory teams.

The Toyota Yaris AP4 he campaigns has a particularly notable pedigree. It is the same car in which Neal Bates won the 2019 Australian Rally Championship and the 2020 RSEA Safety Motorsport Australia Rally Cup, and it is still prepared and serviced by Neal Bates Motorsport. With that platform underneath him, Richie went on to claim the 2023 NSW Rally Championship outright for his first state title, winning three of the final four rounds after missing the opener.

Closer to home, he has won the Lazer Rally of the Bay four times. Richie is also a long-standing supporter of the sport off the stages: his business, Shamrock Haulage, sponsors the NSW Rally Championship, the Shamrock Haulage RD Cup and Rally of the Bay itself.

For 2026 he is paired with fellow Sydney-based Irishman Mac Kierans in the co-driver’s seat. Kierans is a well-credentialled co-driver who has worked alongside the likes of road-racing great Michael Dunlop on Australian rally outings. With proven pace, a championship-winning car and a deep team behind him, Richie shapes as a strong AP4 class contender at every event he rolls up to.