AN UPHILL BATTLE FOR RALLY GB
Things are slowly beginning to come into focus: we know how racing will restart both internationally and on a national scale and there are some firm guidelines on how the governing body Motorsport UK would like to see national rallying implemented in this country. But the championship that is facing perhaps the biggest hurdle is the World Rally Championship. In its favour, of course, is the fact that it doesn’t require a huge amount of people in one area to actually operate. However, there are some overriding factors which have put serious speedbumps in its way and prime among those are the pure commercial aspects of this discipline.
That sums up a big problem facing the organisers of Wales Rally GB. Put simply, if restrictions aren’t lifted on public gatherings then there is no way that the event will generate the necessary finance to make it happen. If there are no ticket sales, that means no piggy bank to delve into to operate the rally.
You have to feel for the organisers here. It can’t just hang on and hang on and hope that a decision to reverse the current lockdown measures will be enough to allow the October 29-November 1 showpiece to take place. The organisers need to have a cut-off point somewhere, and with a threat of a second spike in the coronavirus pandemic and the advice from government changing weekly, trying to find any concrete advice to base a positive decision around at the moment is proving just too tough. It is a very, very tricky position. Hope is not lost, but concerns must be heightened with every passing day.
In this issue, we speak to a Rally GB legend Robert Reid, who takes time to answer readers’ questions posed to him by Luke Barry. Reid, who guided Richard Burns to three triumphs on the UK’S showpiece event, talks frankly about his memories of Britain’s last world title winner and his hopes for the future of the discipline.
We look at the story of Team Parker Racing, which is one of the busiest operations in the UK on the circuits with programmes in everything from the British Touring Car Championship and British GT Championship to Caterhams. We uncover an interesting story about the Mallory Park-based team’s foundations some 23 years ago.
Paul Lawrence looks at the burgeoning Porsche 911 2.0L Cup, which has been one of the big success stories in historic racing in recent times, while Graham Keilloh catches up with a young man in a hurry, Ayrton Simmons, who is adding all the necessary skills to his evident racecraft to jump up the single-seater ladder.