JUNIOR 1000 BOSSES BACK FOREST RALLYING ...
... but organiser wants junior training
The Junior 1000 Championship has backed Rally4wales’ idea to hold low-cost, short distance forest rallies and to include juniors, providing its competitors are given adequate preparation.
The main Junior 1000 Championship in the UK has been lobbying the Motor Sports Association to allow juniors to attempt gravel forest rallying and claims it will continue to do so.
Two weeks ago, Rally4wales and the MSA confirmed an idea had been drafted to hold one or two events next year with a 70-car field, with around 30-miles of action.
The aim is to provide a rally for grassroots entrants, with the type of car allowed limited to low-powered two-wheel-drives and historics.
Currently the Junior 1000 series only competes on single-venues such as circuits and airfields, but the series is interested in future gravel events. “We’ve been talking to the MSA for years,” said the Formula 1000 Rally Club’s Tristan Dodd. “They need to be getting the skills they need when they go in the forest and we’ve been working towards that.
“I think maybe people have seized on the junior side of the event idea when in actual fact the plan has been made in more general terms.
“The phone lit up after MN came out with people asking about it. But no one is just going to throw juniors into the forests without giving them proper training.”
The championship – which has helped to start the careers of World Rally Championship driver Elfyn Evans and European title winner Chris Ingram – has a number of methods it uses to prepare 14-year-olds for rallying. Dodd said it would be no different for gravel events.
“I think juniors will end up in the forests,” he added. “But it will be under well controlled circumstances. Before they’re allowed out on a single venue, they have to jump through a huge number of hoops because we don’t want to be accused of not preparing them should an accident happen.”
Dodd confirmed his support for the idea of a cost-effective event for the grassroots, adding: “We do need an entry level event. We need to get them from the likes of road rallying and Targas to the forests. An event where the drivers can learn, enjoy, and they aren’t throwing the mortgage at it.
“I can see what Jamie [Edwards, R4W] was saying and you need something to make forest rallying achievable.”