CARRYING ON REGARDLESS...
Hard-working members of the Morecambe Car Club, Kirkby Lonsdale Motor Club and West Cumbria Motorsport Club were faced with a nightmare last weekend when the inclement weather rendered much of the planned route for the Malcolm Wilson Rally in Cockermouth last weekend. It was only due to their dedication, perseverance and inventiveness that the opening round of the British Rally Championship was able to take place at all.
Credit goes to all involved for pulling a metaphorical rabbit out of a hat. The season’s curtain-raiser eventually ran to five stages amid the ice and snow and fans were treated to something special. The British Rally Championship might be light on entries this term (just 17 across all the categories), but a masterclass from Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux in his M-Sport Ford Fiesta Rally2 warmed the frozen fans.
The WRC star’s appearance provided a great benchmark for the regular UK competitors. While Fourmaux claimed three out of the five timed tests, James Williams and Keith Cronin certainly made a favourable impression. Anticipation will be high ahead of the next round of the championship, the Jim Clark Rally at the end of May.
In this issue we also include the now famous Motorsport News National Racing Calendar, which outlines all the UK race meetings.
It is a painstaking work from Paul Lawrence and is as comprehensive as you can get. There is nothing more exciting than sitting down with the calendar and your diary to plot out which events to attend. It is inevitable that there will be some changes as the year goes on, so keep an eye on Motorsport News’s event listing each week for the very latest news.
The subject of our readers’ question-and-answer feature this week is GT team boss Andrew Kirkaldy. He was a rising star of the single-seater scene in the late 1990s and won the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award. However, fate and finances dictated that he wasn’t able to continue to follow his Formula 1 dream and instead turned his attention to sportscars, firstly as a driver and latterly as a team owner. His Garage 59 squad will have a flat-out 2023 with three programmes, and there is no better hand to have on the tiller.
As well as that, we have a bumper section of rally reports this week. Alongside the action from the Malcolm Wilson Rally, we include a look at the opening round of the European Rally Championship from Portugal as well as the MN-supported
Circuit Rally Championship, which enjoyed an outing at a bitterly cold Donington Park last weekend.