News

As entries for Sol Rally Barbados 2012 (June 9/10) closed this week, the final drivers from around the region who will be participating in the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport International have been confirmed. They are first-timer Stan Hartling, representing the Turks & Caicos Islands, and Trinidad’s Vishal Dhanraj, who returns for his fifth consecutive year.

Ireland’s Ronan Curley nearly missed Tuesday’s (May 8) trans-Atlantic Geest Line voyage from Portsmouth, as a last-minute gearbox problem threatened to ruin his plans to compete in Sol Rally Barbados 2012 (June 9/10) . . . and he has fellow-competitor Samuel Kelso and Ford Escort specialists Den Motorsport to thank that it didn’t.   Having followed the event in recent years, Curley and close friend Conor McMeel both decided to enter their Vauxhall-engined MkII Ford Escorts in the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport International.

Rallying the familiar Subaru Impreza WRC S12 in its new livery for the first time, Roger Skeete and Louis Venezia won the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Valvoline Shakedown Stages on Sunday (May 6) by just under 10 seconds from Trinidad’s John Powell. On a day of changing fortunes, Skeete won four of the 10 stages, Powell and last year’s winner Paul Bourne sharing the other six equally.

Two volunteer marshals, with more than 30 years’ service to Irish motor sport between them, will shortly be starting the trip of a lifetime, as winners of an all expenses-paid trip to Sol Rally Barbados 2012 (June 9/10), including return flights on Virgin Atlantic from London Gatwick, accommodation for 14 nights and rental car for the duration.