RICHARDS BACKS CALENDAR RETHINK

Motors p or tuk chairman calls for‘ common sense’ in the future

Motorsport UK chairman David Richards believes a rethink is needed on how the UK rally calendar is formed, as called for by Motorsport News at the beginning of the season.

In MN’S ‘how to save national rallying’ feature, one item that came up repeatedly after canvassing the rally community was the belief that fewer events in the calendar could help to boost participation by strengthening bigger events to help improve entries.

While Richards stopped short of backing fewer events, he did say that the UK could implement a policy similar to European countries like France, which doesn’t allow regional rallies two weeks prior to the national championship, in the UK’S case the British Rally Championship.

“We’ve allowed the calendar just to happen,” Richards told MN. “Everyone has turned around to me and this goes a while back, ‘it would be so much better to have a rally calendar, if we didn’t have any regional championship events two weeks before a British Championship event. It would help us with marshalling, officials and participation’. “We can change things through common sense.” Currently the rally calendar is formed by clubs stating when and where they want an event, and that is then approved or denied.

Richards said that a new system could improve national rallying and bring costs down.

“We should be telling the clubs where they can rally, choose the area they can rally in and make sure there’s no overlaps,” Richards added. “We use 10 per cent of the roads available in Wales, the opportunity to expand is colossal.

“And if we do it, the maintenance costs will come down, costs [altogether] will come down. Why has no one managed this? Because no one has the responsibility for the end performance.”