30/09/2024
Motorsport, Rally, British Rally, Web-Zine, E-Zine, E-Mag, Magazine
Motorsport, Rally, British Rally, Web-Zine, E-Zine, E-Mag, Magazine
The Ecurie Royal Oak (ERO) Motor Club has motorsport and in particular, road rallying running through its veins. During the club’s very early days of the 1960s, it managed to ruffle a few feathers but eventually gained acceptance and official motor club status from the RAC in 1970; having also been given the nod by the well-respected legend of the game that is Don Barrow.
This weekend under the cover of darkness, 35 crews armed with OS Maps 118 and 119 will depart from the Knots Inn, Rushton to take on a 110-mile adventure in the lanes of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire. With tar, gravel, grass, concrete, and everything in between lying in wait, one thing that is for certain is a great night of motorsport is on the cards for all.
The 2024 East Riding Stages, organised by the hard-working team at the Beverley & District Motor Club would kick off closed road stage rallying for the year. Conveniently hosted a little under a month before the start of both the British Rally Championship and the Protyre Asphalt series. The fast and flowing ‘Ypres-like’ stages of North East Yorkshire would offer crews a perfect opportunity to gain valuable seat time after the winter break, aiding in their preparation for the season ahead.
On a surprisingly mild morning in January, the rally season officially commenced at the Royal Welsh Showground based just outside the market town of Builth Wells. The North Road Garage Toyota Showground Stages would provide both UK rally fans & competitors with their first event of 2024. The event had been organised and reimagined by the Newton & District Automobile Club and proudly sponsored by the Pritchard family’s North Road Garage Toyota.
I have had an interest in Automotive and Motorsport-related stuff since the late nineties, but I would consider myself a bit of a latecomer to Rallying. It wasn’t until 2006 that I got my first taste of stage rallying and that event was the South of England Tempest rally based in the Aldershot region.
The 2023 Roger Albert Clark Rally marked the fifteenth edition of the event that set out to recreate the essence of the golden era of British Rallying. In the late seventies and eighties, the RAC Rally of Great Britain, as it was known back then, presented a distinctive challenge for the world’s top rally drivers. Spanning across England, Scotland, and Wales over multiple days, the rally encompassed visits to various stately homes, motorsport venues, and forestry roads. The RAC Rally has therefore always been renowned as one of the most demanding and iconic events in the world of rallying.
The last weekend of September saw the third running of Historic Rally Festival. Based in and around the grounds of the seventeenth century grade II listed Weston Hall in Weston Park, near Telford in Shropshire, this “demonstration rally” (untimed) attracted some big names to classic RAC rally stages with star attractions in the name of former British and World Rally Champions.
Set in over one thousand acres of landscaped parkland, with wide open vistas and its famous water splash, this classic, former “RAC Rally” stage was the perfect venue to host a display of classic rally machinery, but more of that later.
The event, ran by the Rallying History organisation, is the only multi venue MotorsportUK sanctioned demonstration rally in the country where cars run untimed at two venues. Previously held both at Weston Park and Ironbridge power station, this year welcomes a new venue with the event moving o Hatton Grange (from Ironbridge) for a bank of three stages on Saturday Morning.
This year saw the 7th annual 6R4.net Test Day take place recently at a private airfield in Lincolnshire.
Organisers Dan Ellmore and David Sims had arranged yet another thrilling day of non-stop track action, including once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for select passenger rides, and with the added option to simply ‘chill’ in the informal social atmosphere of the paddock – despite the blistering heat on the second year running at this venue.