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.