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British & Irish Rally calendars 2023

Still can't believe the closest event to London is not even in the UK... surely Clacton or a totally new rally needs to be in there. Seems a shame. Ulster is a cool event though.
 
Oooo I’m excited by this! I did suspect the Malcolm Wilson was possibly going to join the BRC as it came up on the 2023 calendar on ewrc-results along with the Jim Clark, Ceredigion, Trackrod, Cambrian. It’s still down as a 1-dayer but it was mentioned that it will be the longest gravel rally of the season. Perhaps the BRC will do second runs through Grizedale? Maybe even Grizedale East we now know it’s back in use as a rally stage?

I’m still baffled that a rally in Belgium (albeit an extremely good one) is even considered for inclusion in the British Rally Championship.
 
ouvreur said:
Until someone works out a way to make rallying relevant to people living in London, or indeed any other major city, it's not really worth worrying about...
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I'm afraid this is correct. The sport has disappeared and isn't relevant to those who have the money to fund the sport. And it's not a sudden thing; it's been the best part of 20 years of disappearing down a hole.
 
So 2 rounds co-existing with the BTRDA (Wilson/Trackrod) and an Irish tarmac event to try and draw a few more Irish crews back, interesting. Ypres when they announced the WRC wouldnt be going back was a cert as guess they arent interested in being back in the ERC anytime soon. Clacton being dropped is the one I didnt forsee with its catchment area, must have not gone well this year on one side or both for it to drop so soon.
 
Sal yet again said:
Clacton being dropped is the one I didnt forsee with its catchment area, must have not gone well this year on one side or both for it to drop so soon.
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It looks like they've made an effort to get away from 40-45 minute rallies and I guess Corbeau doesn't really fit into that. I don't see how it could be opened up to much more stage mileage. Nothing wrong with the rally or it's organisation but I can only ever see it being able to run with a 'clubman' length itinerary.
 
I did Clacton the first two times it ran, plus a few other new closed road events. By the time I get to the third loop of stages I just find it fairly boring, but Clacton needs it to keep the mileage up, and they’ve pretty much exhausted the roads they can choose to use in the small area the event covers, I guess they could extend it further out but then has a high risk of losing the vital local support.

Plus my car got stolen the night before 2nd attempt. Not overly keen to go back.
 
HKSjbg said:
I’m still baffled that a rally in Belgium (albeit an extremely good one) is even considered for inclusion in the British Rally Championship.
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It's an incomprehensible admission, or even advertisement, of failure. The UK governing body can't even bring itself to form a UK championship. What are they actually trying to achieve?
 
I hope it’s just a stop gap until something more appropriate comes along in late spring/early summer but as it last ran in the BRC for 3 seasons… probably not.

That being said it’s not far off being what I’d pick for an ideal calendar; I’d swap the Jim Clark for Ypres’s date; swap Ypres for the Manx in May (would probably need help from IoM tourist board to make that happen); swap MW and the Cambrian; combine the Cambrian with Rally North Wales in the last weekend of March for the best stages Wales has to offer all in one rally; and maybe have a bigger spread between Ulster, Ceredigion and Yorkshire.

The eleven week gap between rounds 1 and 2 would be sorted and they’d pretty much be going to all the best rally stages in the British Isles, save for a never-gonna-happen trip to the Tay Forest Park stages near Perth. The Lake District in autumn would also give the season finale a very RAC feel to it.
 
the sniper said:
It's an incomprehensible admission, or even advertisement, of failure. The UK governing body can't even bring itself to form a UK championship. What are they actually trying to achieve?
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What actual involvement does the MSUK have with the running of the BRC? One imagines it's very little......It's left to individual events....

With no event in the all important south east region, a savvy governing body would be looking to introduce an event that ticks off all the boxes for all 'stake holders'. But they'll leave it up to others to do this.....
 
HKSjbg said:
I hope it’s just a stop gap until something more appropriate comes along in late spring/early summer but as it last ran in the BRC for 3 seasons… probably not.

.....combine the Cambrian with Rally North Wales in the last weekend of March for the best stages Wales has to offer all in one rally; and maybe have a bigger spread between Ulster, Ceredigion and Yorkshire.
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That is something that makes sense, so is unlikely to happen. However, Rally North Wales (formerly the Bulldog/Audi Sport) used to be run in October, about 2 weeks before the Cambrian - and personally it seems better in the autumn.
 
AndyRAC said:
What actual involvement does the MSUK have with the running of the BRC? One imagines it's very little......It's left to individual events....

With no event in the all important south east region, a savvy governing body would be looking to introduce an event that ticks off all the boxes for all 'stake holders'. But they'll leave it up to others to do this.....
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Thats the joy of contracting out, when things go well you can bask in the glory however when its the opposite direction of travel blame the promoter. The fact that the "promoter" then has to make money to pay salaries (inflated or not) means that the fees charged to the events and the crews goes up. Judging by the way the current BRC operation works they just tend to report social media content by some competitors and certainly havent engaged with traditional media at all so not sure where the money is going..
 
As far as I'm aware, the organisation/promotion of the BRC was brought 'in-house' by MUSK/IMS a few years ago, following overwhelming recommendations by competitors to do so. (Wasn't there a survey during 2015, the year it didn't run?)
 
Interesting - yet it works elsewhere - for example ToCA for the BTCC, SRO for British GT, etc

Can't help but think it's another example of rallying being out of step with the rest of motorsport.....
 
prpr said:
As far as I'm aware, the organisation/promotion of the BRC was brought 'in-house' by MUSK/IMS a few years ago, following overwhelming recommendations by competitors to do so. (Wasn't there a survey during 2015, the year it didn't run?)
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Looks like I missed that! Really makes it seem worse on the surface then in that case.
 
I'm not sure why they're seemingly so keen to have 7 rounds, other than MSUK presumably getting seven lots of fees from events? It'd seem at least one too many, particularly when they've thrown in two non-mainland rounds..

I wasn't around for the glory years, but I don't think I'll ever be convinced that anything other than a 5 or 6 round, Yorkshire, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Ireland and Manx event calendar is the optimum model. The question is only whether you can manage to organise 5 150 to 200km events or have to make do with existing events stepping up a little, as is pretty much currently done.
 
I suspect in an ideal world, they'd like 150-200km events; but can't afford to run events of that length. Thinking back to when the BRC was last in a golden era, the F2 years, these were the events:

March; Vauxhall Rally of Wales - Mid/North Wales. No longer runs
April; Pirelli International Rally - Kielder Forest. Now run as the Kielder Forest Rally, BTRDA, but outside the BRC. 1 day/ 45 miles.
June; RSAC Scottish Rally - Southern Scottish stages. No longer a BRC event, still counts as a SRC round. 1 day/ 45 miles.
July; Seat Jim Clark Rally - Duns. BRC, and SRC.
July; Stena Line Ulster Rally - Antrim. Returns to the BRC next year.
Sept; Manx International Rally - Isle of Man. Not run since 2017.

The Trackrod was in the BRC from 2002, and has been in, then out, and returned as a BRC round.

I think 6-7 properly promoted events is the optimum number you'd want to see. And I don't think we should have a round in Europe, despite it being a great event.
 
I wonder whether it’s more feasible for the BRC event to be two 70km events run on the same weekend i.e. a Scottish ch’ship event + plus a BTRDA event or Welsh + BHRC etc. to get 140ish km. Rather than a situation like the Cambrian 2020 when the extra BRC stages had to be cancelled due to not enough entries making it viable?
 
AndyRAC said:
I think 6-7 properly promoted events is the optimum number you'd want to see. And I don't think we should have a round in Europe, despite it being a great event.
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I'd like seven rounds, I just think it's too costly for competitors. It exacerbates the issue of entries falling off as the season progresses. The Cambrian almost might as well have not been in the BRC.
 
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