How do you think British rallying needs to change?
“British rallying has, to a large extent, created its own problem”
Three weeks ago on January 21, I sent out a plea. I like to think I’m a fairly diplomatic person but I couldn’t stand by and watch British rallying take punch after punch without saying my piece. As well as laying out where I thought we could improve as a sport, I invited everyone to send in their thoughts about how to reverse the seemingly continuous decline of UK rallying. And a lot of readers came back with some interesting ideas.
For that, I want to thank you. I was humbled to see some of you take the time to respond and offer your thoughts on what is, if we’re honest, quite a difficult topic to address. Not only is it hard to admit when things aren’t going swimmingly, it can be even harder to pinpoint the solutions and that’s most certainly the case here. However by having this discussion, we can all hopefully lay out the right stepping stones to revive life into British rallying for the next generation.
One common bugbear among the community however is the Ford Escort Mk2 love affair. We’ve all seen and heard the jokes and jibes about the number of these cars that are out on our stages – and it’s hard to argue against that. Of course, there is an enormous charm to a proper Mk2 being pedalled hard but that shine is lost when it’s so common. But, more pertinently, it’s a worrying precedent when quite probably the most popular rally car in this country is over 40 years old.
As somebody incredibly well placed put it to me recently: “We’ve done the most UK thing possible and thought we’re better than the rest, and we’re not.” It’s easy to see how that’s happened if you look back to the start of the century and consider the vast number of UK importers invested in the domestic rallying scene. But it’s telling when you look at series in France, Spain,
Italy and Belgium – to name just a few – and you notice that plenty of the Rally2 entries have support from the local importers. We don’t see that in Britain anymore.
One competitor emailed me and said: “British rallying has created its own problem by allowing home-brew specials. There is no chance of attracting any manufacturer/ importer interest in UK rallying when it’s possible to win in a 40-year-old car. Ford Escorts should not be a competitive option in modern rallying; I believe there is a place for these in historic rallying.
“With the new rally Rally1, Rally2, Rally3, Rally4 and Rally5 categories there is a structure for technical regulation.
There should be a place for older (more affordable) cars in national rallying but these should have been previously homologated and run to that homologation. By running the modern categories you also have a much more level playing field in terms of competition and it’s not about who has the most expensive kit. Level the playing field and actually see who has the talent.”
An organiser also sent in their thoughts and was slightly more scathing, saying some “have no interest in the greater good of the sport, only in their own small part of it” before pointing to a wider problem. “I cannot possibly see any improvement while such people are the majority in the sport and have access to social media. The nastiness associated with anything to do with the BRC is quite embarrassing,” they said. Their other points included allowing closed-road events to be the future and forests rallies to slowly perish and finding a solution to run fewer rallies but with a paid organising team as opposed to volunteers.
Motorsport UK CEO Hugh Chambers has also recently expressed his thoughts in Motorsport UK’s magazine Revolution. Chambers wrote: Realistically domestic rallying is really a driver/co-driver funded activity and as such we need to get the costs down and the accessibility up. The events that are massively oversubscribed are things like the Roger Albert Clark, the Mull Rally and even the single-venue rallies at race circuits. These latter events may not all be the traditionalists’ idea of a rally, but the market responds in saying they like these events – and we need to learn from that. We love forest stage rallying – but we cannot stick our heads in the sand and assume that everything can simply continue in the way it has done for years.”
It’s all good food for thought, but could potentially be more than that. Motorsport UK has committed to drawing together “a group of people from the spectrum of stakeholders who can bring expert skills to the table, and a fresh set of ideas on how rallying in the UK can be reinvented for the new age.” Well done to them. And as I said in last month’s column, I’m happy to help wherever I can.