CHRIS BOYDE
“Has national rallying turned a corner?”
As the major championships gear up to start a new campaign – MN Circuit Championship excepted – how welcome has it been to see a New Year start with such positivity at national level in both the UK and Ireland?
Entry lists are filling on both sides of the Irish Sea; North West Stages surge for entries was quite incredible with over 160 entries for its 120 places, while rumours say the opening Irish Tarmac Championship counter in Galway next month might host an astonishing 25 R5 crews, something that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.
The Scottish Government’s closed roads motorsport consultation ended on Monday, and hopefully another step towards the return of events north of the border follows. Meanwhile, the trickle of new closed roads events to the south shows both demand and excitement, that is matched by new opportunities being announced on several levels for our up and coming drivers.
It all leads to a genuine feeling that a bumper year is in prospect, and that national rallying across these islands may finally have turned a corner, away from the insurance and regulatory gloom of the past few years.
Encouragingly, on the Isle of Man we are also seeing these green shoots.
The Manx Rally Championship begins on February 9 with a single venue event, the Jurby Stages. The entry has already exceeded expectations in terms of both numbers and quality. The extent that strong social media engagement has played in this, as with the NW Stages, cannot be understated and is a lesson for all events going forward.
The last planned Jurby airfield events were scrapped in 2015 and 2016 due to a lack of entries, despite it serving a much-needed entrylevel route into the sport for newcomers, given that the remaining Manx events are all multi-day. Over 10% of the entry received for this year’s event is indeed from first timers.
Entries open for the Manx National Rally next month and it will be interesting to see the level of demand. Organisers Manx Auto Sport are hoping to push the number of available places up towards 130 in expectation and many leading crews have already booked ferries and accommodation, so the signs are good.
The rally becomes a double-header round of the Motorsport UK Asphalt Rally Championship this year, but club president Mark Ellison confirms that it will retain its compact timetable, with eight stages on Friday evening into the night and eight more on Saturday, covering 130 miles.
Further ahead, the question mark over Rally Isle of Man will also hopefully become clearer in the coming weeks. Clerk of the course Robert Graham is hopeful that an event will happen this term, though acknowledges there are still many hurdles to overcome, and potential dates, format and length are still under consideration. He is also aware the clock is ticking. So much for a quiet winter... As elsewhere throughout the British Isles, anticipation is high for action to begin.