MULL RETURN A ‘NEW START FOR RALLYING’
Richards is keen to utilise the success of closed-road events in the future
Motorsport UK chairman David Richards says British rallying is at the start of a new era with events like last week’s Mull Rally right at the heart of it.
Richards, who visited the Tobermorybased event, says rising costs allied to diminishing demand for forest rallying potentially means more asphalt action and less events in the woods.
“We can see this event here in Mull really does work and more and more you see a template for future events that support local rural communities,” said Richards. “I see this as a new start for rallying. “Forest rallying is, by its nature, expensive and the repairs to the forests cost a lot once the events have passed through. We’ve seen declining participation [in forest rallies] and we have to believe this is mostly to do with the costs involved.
“Running closed-road events, yes they’re going to be difficult to start with as we sort ourselves out – and we’re being very careful and not giving a lot of events the chance to kick off [with closed-road events] – because it’s very important, we’ve got to keep it under control to start with. We need to make sure we learn as we go along.
“The North West Stages was a great success and, likewise, the event in Aberystwyth [Rali Bae Ceredigion] – both events want to expand next year.
I can see us having a great series of closed-road events.
“And I’d like to see how road rallying is developing and see if we can use closedroad legislation to assist in that side of motorsport.”
A number of closed-road events have been held throughout Britain since new legislation was brought in, including Tendring and Clacton, Three Shires Stages and Rali Bae Ceredigion.
Richards said there was also a need to look at the British rallying calendar and restrict the number of events running.
He added: “We need less [forest] events. We need to control it better, we don’t need the overlap of events that we have today and that will help in so many areas with things like rescue crews, marshalling, the whole range of things. We’ve got to take more control of the calendar and manage it more effectively.”