BRC CHAMPS EARN FREE GB NATIONAL ENTRY

The overall winners of this year’s British Rally Championship and the Junior category victors will be awarded a free entry to the national section of Wales Rally GB as part of the event’s Road to Wales scheme.

As well as the BRC, the winners of the Scottish and BTRDA Gold Star championships will also gain a free entry, while two other national championships have chosen a slightly different criteria.

The Welsh Championship will award the free entry to the crew with the best score from five of seven rounds if the series hasn’t been decided by the Wooodpecker Rally in September. The Northern Irish series will hand its prize to its Junior winner.

Elfyn Evans and Rob Duggan currently lead the BRC 1 and BRC Junior slates, while Garry Pearson, James Wilson and Luke Francis head the Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh respectively. Charlie Payne tops the BTRDA Gold Star championship.

Duggan was the winner of last year’s Carryduff Forklift Road to Wales award, which gave him a David Greer-prepared Citroen DS 3 R3T Max to compete in the Junior World Rally Championship. He retired with engine issues but had run as high as second during the event.

“It’s definitely something we’d potentially look into,” said Duggan, who leads the Junior BRC standings by 25 points. “After last year, we’d love to go back and get the three days of it. It’s always good to do a world event so to go back and get a trouble-free run would be great for experience.”

SRC leader Pearson added: “It’s definitely a good prize. The problem for us is I don’t know if we’d be able to afford it. It’s certainly a massive prize that could be up for grabs.”

This year’s National Rally will use the same 12 stages as the World Championship crews, but will run them once to a total of 107 miles over three days of competitive action. Entries open on August 31.

Mike Faulkner and Pete Foy won last year’s event, after Jock Armstrong broke a wheel bearing on the last stage of the three-day marathon.