MOTORSPORT NEWS BACKS CIRCUIT RALLY SERIES FOR SIXTH YEAR
Luke Barry examines the evolution of the MNCRC after its first five years of existence
Motorsport News will continue its partnership with the Circuit Rally Championship for a sixth successive year as the series gears up for its 2020-21 battle.
MN has been involved since the birth of the series in 2015 and has tied up a deal with championship co-ordinator Darren Spann to continue its support.
Spann said: “We’re really excited to take this relationship into the second half of this championship’s first decade.
“Motorsport News gives us guaranteed media coverage at the highest standard and we couldn’t ask for a better partner to enhance the set-up with Motorsport Vision and Bolton Le Moors Car Club to make the series the success that it has been. And without those three names being involved from the outset we wouldn’t have another great partner in
Michelin who are also back for a sixth season.”
The 2020/21 champion will once again receive a Proton Iriz R5 test with Mellors Elliot Motorsport while two new classes will be added for this season catering for historic cars and four-wheeldrive cars with an H-pattern gearbox.
Junction 2 on the M40 isn’t the usual birthplace of a rally championship. But back in May 2015, Beaconsfield Services was the setting for a handshake between Darren Spann of Bolton Le Moors Car Club, James Bolton, then of Motorsport News, and Davids Willey and Scott of MSV. Their deal would transform the future of circuit rallying.
Bolton had been invited to a press day for the Neil Howard Stages at Oulton
Park – organised by Bolton Le Moors – the previous year and loved it. After the rally, Bolton had suggested in his MN column that a championship should be created for the single-venue circuit rallies that existed across the country. Having read it, Spann spotted an opportunity.
“I thought let’s ring him up and see how serious he is,” the nowchampionship coordinator says. “He said we’d love to, so from that I rang MSV and got MSV involved and we set it up between the three of us.”
The Motorsport News Circuit Rally Championship’s success was all but assured within half an hour of the announcement press release being distributed in 2015. Michelin was signed as a championship partner after meetings at that year’s Oulton Park and Croft BTCC rounds; a coup for any championship let alone one that hadn’t even received any registrations yet.
The first-ever round was the Neil Howard, which has been the series opener ever since, and attracted a capacity entry with names like Stephen Simpson, Graham Coffey and WRC co-driver Elliott Edmondson on the start list.
Rounds at Brands Hatch, Anglesey, Snetterton, Croft, Rockingham and two at Cadwell Park made up the rest of the calendar with Donington and Knockhill coming in to displace Croft and Rockingham in future years.
Uniquely, the season is spread over the winter months as it begins in November and runs into the following spring. This was a conscious decision by the series organisers to offer competition during the quietest period of the motorsport calendar, which satisfies the needs of both competitors and the circuits.
But simply staging rallies at venues such as these has always given the MNCRC its true USP within UK rallying. There are a multitude of championships catering for gravel forest and closed-road Tarmac rallies but no other is comprised simply of racing circuits.
“The purpose of the championship was to fill a gap in the market,” Spann says. “When I competed, I couldn’t afford to go rallying in the forests and do a full championship in the forests. Mr Average can’t afford to do a championship based on those events so I wanted to fill a gap whereby the out-and-out clubman can come and do the championship. I would say on a budget you can do it on less than £1000 an event, I don’t think there’s anywhere else that you can do that.”
This more cost-effective model has helped unearth talent like Chris West. Using a Peugeot 306 Maxi, West dipped his toe in the water before committing to the championship in 2017-18 and going on to seal back-to-back titles.
“I’m on a very small budget compared to a lot of people, money is a big issue for me,
but I just went out [and] did a couple rounds of the championship in 2015,” West says. “I started and decided to do the championship [in 2017] and did quite well in it. And it’s good value for money. Jersey [Rally 2019], for instance, cost me about £10,000. To go and do a championship round, if you want to go there and win and be successful you’re looking at £2500 to £3000 so there is a massive difference.”
But are the rallies stimulating enough for drivers? There are common preconceptions that label the events as mickey-mouse or car-park rallies but reigning champion Barry Morris doesn’t subscribe to that view.
“You can’t go over there and expect to beat the locals,” the Irishman says. “I definitely didn’t think we’d get to where we got but we had to fight for it. There was never an event that came easy. The competition over there is fierce and anybody that thinks any different, they need to do it to appreciate it. Through every class, the whole way down the field everybody’s super competitive.
The whole team over there make you feel very welcome so we’ll be trying to get a few more Irish crews over with us because it is a great championship.”
Morris – a seasoned Tarmac driver – isn’t the only esteemed competitor to have sampled the MNCRC stages with Motorsport UK chairman David Richards and British Rally Championship regulars Matt Edwards, Alex Laffey and Rhys Yates all taking part in the past. But the MNCRC has enticed plenty of circuit racers over the years too. Le Mans 24 Hours winner Guy Smith is a round winner as is Bentley GT driver Frank Bird while BTCC race winner Paul O’neill regularly competes each year in a Mazda MX-5 at Oulton Park.
O’neill not only loves competing, but believes driving a rally car helps broaden a racing driver’s skillset too. “I do a lot of ice driving with Mclaren now and I was a bit worried about teaching people something I didn’t really know about, but because of the rallying I’m actually pretty good at it,” he says.
“A lot of club racers do ring me and ask if they think it’s worth having a go at the MNCRC, would it help me in circuit racing? The answer to that is yes mate definitely. You can accelerate what
[car control] you’ve got by going and doing it. The championship’s awesome, I think it’s a proper hidden gem I really do.”
All in all, it’s fair to assess that the first five years of the Circuit Rally Championship have been a success but what about the next five? “I don’t like keeping still with it,” Spann says.
“We’ve always got to keep evolving it and keep attracting new people into the championship. We’re really conscious that with us being at race circuits and race venues that if you’re not careful and you don’t keep varying it, it would become stale very quickly.”
Tweaks are being made to all aspects of the championship too, with Sam Colman coming in to present and script the TV coverage. And last season a
Proton Iriz R5 test was introduced for the champion as just another incentive to maximise the series’appeal.
This foresight and reactiveness is what’s kept the Motorsport News Circuit Rally Championship fresh, competitive and exciting. And it’s why its next chapter is guaranteed to be just as rich as the first.