News

Entry closing date for Sol RB20 extended by seven days

Despite winning Sol Rally Barbados four times in the last five years, Jamaica’s Jeff Panton is approaching this year’s 31st running of the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event in a less than confident mood. In a year in which coronavirus has created unprecedented global upheaval, the continuing social distancing and travel restrictions under Covid-19 protocols mean planning for the event has been anything but simple.

The organisers of Sol Rally Barbados have today (September 24) confirmed Ken Block’s participation in this year’s event, postponed from June until October 31/November 1 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. With around six million followers on each of Facebook and Instagram, Block is one of the most-recognised names in global motor sport, with a huge boost in coverage promised for the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event as the island struggles to rebuild its tourism industry.

Procter wins in UK, with island connections on podiums

The Barbados Rally Club (BRC) has confirmed a radical rethink of all former conventions in planning the route for the delayed Sol Rally Barbados 2020, changes made possible in part by the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Highlights of the two-day event will include the longest special stage in recent memory, a move away from the tradition of Saturday stages in the north of the island and Sunday’s in the south-east and a journey through all but one of the island’s parishes.

Title-holders Corbin and Skeete head up local entries

Three decades on from claiming the first overseas result in the Barbados Rally Club’s International All-Stage Rally – he finished ninth in 1991 in a Volkswagen Golf GTI – Britain’s Howard Paterson is pulling out all the stops to make sure he can compete in Sol Rally Barbados 2020. Against the background of uncertainties created by Covid-19, the well-travelled Paterson says that “Barbados is the only place I would consider shipping my car out to and doing an event.”