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The afternoon of Friday 26th September saw the North Yorkshire seaside town of Filey play host to almost 170 rally cars as they gathered on the sea front for the ceremonial start of the 2025 Trackrod Rally Yorkshire.
The Woodpecker Rally is now firmly settled into its new Mid Wales base after last year’s move from Ludlow. The switch has opened up some of the sport’s most famous gravel stages, with around 45 competitive miles on offer through Hafren and the rarely used Tarenig – stages that have shaped rallying history for decades.
From the stunning Cowal Peninsula in Scotland, the Dunoon Presents Argyll Rally would return to host the Asphalt, British Historic and Scottish Rally Championships.
Organised by the Mull Car Club, the event featured over 66 competitive miles across 16 Asphalt stages. Spread over two days, a little under one hundred crews would tackle this magnificent event from its rally HQ in Dunoon.
After months of waiting, the sounds of rally cars would once again reverberate around the Welsh countryside; at the 2025 Plains rally. This year, the Plains would not only see the event return to national rallying after suffering insufficient entries last year but would also signal the return of rallying to the Welsh Forests for the first time since the Cambrian Rally back in October last year.
The 2025 British Rally Championship was reawakened for the second round of the season, the much-anticipated Kielder Carlisle Stages, which made their triumphant return to the BRC calendar for the first time since 2019.
After three back-to-back Asphalt events, the Motorsport UK, FUCHS Lubricants British Historic Rally Championship would return to gravel for the eighth round of its 2024 season. With the return to perhaps the Championships favoured surface, The Phil Price Memorial Woodpecker Rally would also see an increased level of participation across the field, as the series now heads into the business end of the championship.
The Motorsport UK FUCHs Lubricants British Historic Rally Championship would venture to the picturesque Cowal Peninsula in Scotland for the sixth round of its 2024 season.
The Dunoon Presents Argyll Rally has earned a good reputation among the Asphalt Championship fraternity since it joined their series back in 2022. When speaking to Xlerate ahead of the season, BHRC Championship Manager Colin Heppinstall talked of how he wanted to add “well-known” Asphalt events with “good reputations” to the expanded Championship calendar this year and the Argyll along with the Manx were the ones that everyone “loved” or “raved about”.
For Rounds 4 & 5 of its 2024 season, The FUCHS Lubricants, Motorsport UK, British Historic Rally Championship would return to the Isle of Man for the first time since 2017 for a doubleheader points scoring opportunity. A place that has a rich history in Motorsport and indeed British Rallying, the Isle of Man offers up the ideal playground of quality closed roads around the stunningly picturesque Island for a two-day event covering 126 stage miles, which was a very welcomed return to the series.
For the third round of the Fuchs Lubricants British Historic Rally Championship, we travel 43 miles due south (on the A483) from Welshpool (RD2 Rally North Wales), to Builth Wells showground for the fiftieth running of the Severn Valley “Rallynuts” Stages.
Into their seventh year of sponsoring the Midland Manner Motorclub run event, a bumper entry would greet the Crews in Builth, with Rallynuts featuring on the Probite British Rally Championship roster for the first time along with three other major championships and perhaps the strongest loose surface entry list the UK had seen for a very long time. In BHRC terms, this was the first time since 2017 that it would form a round of the BHRC.
The third Saturday of March saw crews descend on the market town of Welshpool for the second round of the MotorsportUK Fuchs Lubricants British Historic Rally Championship, Get Jerky Rally North Wales.
Mid-February had seen a very wet and soggy round 1 in Yorkshire, The Riponian, an event that left as many questions as it answered. George Lepley and Dale Bowen took the overall BHRC win in their Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 but were unable to score towards the overall championship in their recently homologated 4WD Grp A machine. Therefore, this left Yorkshire man Matthew Robinson and Northern Irishman Adrian Hetherington heading the championship standings from the returning (to BHRC) former champion Ben Friend in third.