ALL SET FOR THE YEAR TO BEGIN...
For competitors, this will be a watershed weekend. The lights will flick off once again and the rest of the 2020 season can get underway. After months in suspended animation, the adrenaline will flow. Those racers, who will be launching into action at Cadwell Park, Castle Combe and Snetterton, will be grateful that they can get back to the track, but there is hours and hours of work that has gone on in the background to get to this point.
The guidelines issued by Motorsport UK might seem stringent to begin with, but they will soon become normal and, if this is what it takes to return competition to the Tarmac, then each measure is valuable.
There needs to be some understanding from competitors that things won’t work in quite the way they used to, and they need to have patience with organisers and volunteers to make sure that the events run smoothly. If that can be achieved, then the remaining fixtures, as outlined on pages 16-17 of this week’s Motorsport News, will be able to go ahead.
Under the spotlight this week, Dario Franchitti answers the Motorsport News readers’ questions. The Scot is a national hero, even though most of his success came in the USA. The three-time Indianapolis 500 winner takes time to tackle the posers put to him by deputy editor Graham Keilloh.
Those questions were solicited by MN through social media. That medium has firmly established itself as a useful tool for all racing and rally drivers, be they international or national. It can be employed for a number of uses, and not all of them have been positive. Reporter Luke Barry looks into the topic and speaks to a number of people from the paddocks and service parks to offer a useful insight.
Barry also sets out his vision for national rallying on pages 22-23. Amid the triumphant return of circuit racing, national rallying has a more complex path to restore it to the health it had at the start of 2020. We look at the route to achieve this and the compromises that might have to be made to get there.
Our rallycross editor Hal Ridge takes a look at the engineering selection pack of discipline which is the Supernational class. Innovation is stifled so often in front-line motorsport, but Ridge looks at an area where diversification is genuinely encouraged.