British & Irish Championships 2024

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Anyone watched the BRC highlights show programme last night ?

Sadly there wasnt much improvement other than a slightly less complex showing of the various Championships & car classes.

To be fair the foggy weather didnt help the view of the action, but the camerawork was still pretty poor in terms of the positions, tracking shots losing the car and the drone shots again very amateurish.

[AndyRAC]

Plains Rally cancelled - a real shame.

https://www.plainsrally.co.uk/

[HKSjbg]

Blimey that’s a surprise. Doesn’t seem believable that a BHRC round can have too small an entry these days but here we are

[archie106]

This year it wasn't a round of the BHRC, just the Welsh forest championship and a couple of regional championships.

A big shame, but forest rallies which aren't a round of a major championship are struggling. I also don't think it helps having the Plains then the Border Counties on successive weekends, both of them stuck around the 70-80 entries mark.

The number of entries for the Rallynuts showed that there is still the appetite for forest rallying, however would it be better to have fewer events which are better spaced through the year? Rather than a load of events at the start of the year and a load at the end. (I know it would be tricky to do)

Just as an idea, have some events which only run every 2 years similar to the North West Stages. For instance, run Rally North Wales and the Plains on alternating years. Could help limit risks to organising clubs as should get a bigger entry for each one?

[AndyRAC]

Both the Plains & Border Counties are now run at different times to when they used to previously. The Borders was mid March, and the Plains for years was mid/late September, since 2009?? it moved to it's current slot. Obviously, forestry allocation may be the reason, but I regularly wonder just how much communication there is between organising teams.

Events/ championship are all competing for entrants, and there needs to be a way to facilitate all these events to run. Losing events is doing the clubs, or the sport no good at all.

Funny that you mention the North Wales & Plains, as back in the day, they used similar forests about a month apart in the autumn, when the North Wales was called the Bulldog.......

[HKSjbg]

This year it wasn't a round of the BHRC, just the Welsh forest championship and a couple of regional championships.

Oh yes of course. May well explain why so few entries then, the Welsh championship isn’t exactly oversubscribed…

[Steve Boyd]

Both the Plains & Border Counties are now run at different times to when they used to previously. The Borders was mid March, and the Plains for years was mid/late September

The Plains was in mid-April 35 years ago, though. I was servicing on the event on the day of the Hillsborough disaster.

It isn't uncommon for events to change dates. When it's done at the behest of a large championship it rarely has an impact. When a date change is forced by influences outside of rallying it can have a significant impact and if a large championship decides it doesn't want your event either because of location or a date you can't change then it often means the event has a limited future. Just look at the Astra, Dukeries & North Humberside events as other examples.

It's a sad loss. I remember marshalling on the event when it was a road rally and have been involved many times since.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

ITRC Rally of the Lakes underway and Matt Edwards is finding it a steep learning curve vs the experienced locals of Devine and Cronin.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Keith Cronin just took a huge 18.2 sec out of both Devine & Edwards on SS4 ! Edwards says that's mental and Keith is a special talent.

Edit -
Disastrous bad luck for Cronin on SS7 losing 2 mins with a puncture.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Some good live action filmed by On The Limit and with cars at 30s intervals making it really enjoyable to watch:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/royfY3g2z2rYMgEL/