MN CIRCUIT RALLY PREVIEW

Motorsport News has a vested interest in the MN Circuit Rally Championship, so we brought in an independent adjudicator to describe what it’s like to compete in the series.

British Touring Car Championship race winner Paul O’neill will start his fourth rally in the series this weekend in a Paul Sheard Mazda MX-5. Having not done any rallying before, it’s quickly become a staple of his calendar.

“I’ll be honest, I thought it would be something I wouldn’t like,” says O’neill, driving the plucky 1600cc car to second and third in class on the Neil Howard Stages and Lee Holland Memorial Stages at Anglesey last year.

“The changing surface is so alien to me. In a racing car I’d know or have an idea what’s coming. With rallying, everything just changes all the time. I don’t like stuff that’s unpredictable.

“But the whole nature of it being unpredictable, turns out I properly love it. I love the organisation of the events, the fact that you have to rely on someone else sat next to you as well, working together to get the best out of the situation, and I love being against the clock.

“You’re never sat around like you are at a race weekend either. It’s bang, bang, bang...get on with it.”

It hasn’t always gone to plan, and it was a tricky baptism of fire on the 2016 event when the gearbox broke in a Mk3 MX-5, but more seat time and a switch to the Mk1 for 2017 yielded strong results.

“The first thing I found difficult was exiting the assembly area the wrong way [compared to circuit races] and going straight into the cones on my first go!” he adds.

“You don’t have time to warm the tyres up, as soon as you touch the brakes for the first corner the car is sliding straight away and that was tricky to start with. That’s something I’m just not used to.

“I really didn’t like that at first because it puts you on the back foot and you lose your confidence, coming from circuit racing. That’s why I massively respect the other drivers in the championship, and at every level of rallying. What the drivers are able to do is brilliant.”

With a strong class entry, many of the cars boasting more power than the MX-5, a class win may evade O’neill again. But as competitive as he is, the urge to compete is yet to be extinguished.

“It’s the highlight of my calendar,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d like it, but I’d do it full-time if I could.”

Now to break it to him that the MN series isn’t quite at a level where drivers are paid to compete. Not yet anyway…