BABY BLUE WAS ALMOST SET FOR SCOTLAND INSTEAD OF WALES
Frank Kelly and his famous ‘Baby Blue’Ford Escort Mk2 were almost destined for a return to Scottish rallying before the Northern Irishman decided to enter the Welsh Rally Championship instead.
Kelly contested a full
SRC season in 2009, winning his class on the Merrick Stages, a year after entering the BTRDA Rally Series.
The last rally he did on the mainland UK was in 2010 but Kelly and daughter
Lauren will return in 2021.
“I suppose like everybody we got fed up of waiting for rallying to come to us,” he told The Stage By Stage live show, hosted by former professional co-driver Trevor Agnew. “We’ve had a couple offers around Europe but
I’m very wary of committing to something like that and then maybe another lockdown comes.
“But when I saw on Facebook the Welsh championship putting up a calendar starting with the Nicky Grist [Stages] on July 10 I thought ‘that looks good’. The last time I was there was 2008 when we did the BTRDA championship and I always promised myself to go back, and it just never happened. We registered from the championship, got a great response from them and it moved from there.
“We actually looked at Scotland as well and it was a toss-up, Scotland or Wales,” Kelly added. “Scotland is probably a little bit easier travel-wise and I was still in two minds and then we entered Argyll Rally and we didn’t even get on the reserve list so that sort of made my mind up for me, we’ll go Wales. So Wales here we come.”
Kelly’s first event of the year will be the M-Sport Stages on July 3-4, a week before the Nicky Grist Stages.