Clubmans switches from BARC to MSVR
Clubmans Sports Prototype Championship organisers have decided to end the category’s long association with the British Automobile Racing Club to run with Motorsport Vision Racing next year.
The Clubmans Register investigated buying track time from other clubs when MSVR made an offer to take the championship under its banner.
Clubmans Register chairman Mike Evans says that the category’s southern competitor base made the calendar the BARC offered unattractive.
“It’s a championship that people dip in and out of – it’s not a championship where everyone does every round,” said Evans. “We have a core of a dozen who do every round and then there’s about 15 to 16 that come and go, and nearly all of those guys are from the south Midlands or south-east so we get good grids at Silverstone, Donington Park, Brands Hatch and Snetterton. As we go further afield to Pembrey, Anglesey and Cadwell Park our numbers do tend to reduce.
“The calendar and circuits are critical to how well it works out – if we have two meetings in the same month we tend to have lower numbers. We’ve been with BARC for about 50 years and they’ve treated us well but the calendar this time just wasn’t good for us.
“It had Silverstone in mid-march which is not the best time of year – our guys don’t tend to come out of the woodwork until mid-april. Then it was Pembrey and Anglesey and it didn’t really work. So someone from our committee was looking to see if we could buy track time from other clubs. MSVR came back to us with a really good calendar so we thought for 2020 we would give it a go with them.”
The provisional calendar begins at Donington Park in mid-april and also features trips to Snetterton, Silverstone, Oulton Park, Croft and Brands Hatch. It is expected that entry fees will be lower now too.