British joy

It’s been really good to see the British Rally Championship back, and back with a bang this year.

After many years in the doldrums and falling entries, this year has been a breath of fresh air.

Ben Taylor and Iain Campbell, who’ve been the driving force behind the new series, the media team of Jonathan Gill and Ben Buesnel of MPA Creative, event organisers, officials and all the competitors should take a bow. It has shown that there’s not much wrong with British rallying.

You’ve only got to look at the quality and quantity of the Manx entry list, when you had Craig Breen and Mark Higgins there to challenge Elfyn Evans, Fredrik Ahlin, Tom Cave and the rest to see the level of interest in quality events.

For one who grew up watching the likes of the legends, Ari Vatanen, Markku Alen, Hannu Mikkola, Bjorn Waldegaard and a host of other Scandinavian drivers here to do the quality events back then, its been good to see the same thing happening again. I hope this trend continues in 2017.