Swann and Woodburn planning early for BCIC RB25

Fresh from his second consecutive win on the Rixy Stages, the last rally of the year in the UK on Sunday (December 29), Rob Swann has confirmed his participation in BCIC Rally Barbados 2025. Having finished second four times, he is as determined as ever to win the island’s premier event on his 17th visit, campaigning his Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo in the FIA R5 class with co-driver Tom Woodburn.
Victory at the weekend was the second in as many months in the UK for Swann and co-driver Steve McNulty in the Ford Fiesta WRC in which he finished second to Ken Block in RB20. While November’s Island Stages was a closed-road event on the Isle of Wight, Sunday was a single-venue rally at STANTA, a British Army training area in Norfolk.
Organised by the Barbados Rally Club (BRC), BCIC RB25 will run from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1. The Rally Show (May 24), where a display of every car entered is the focal point of a huge celebration of island rallying, and the final shakedown and seeding event, King of the Hill (May 25), fill the previous weekend.
Having first competed in the island in 2008, Swann has been the most successful European driver in recent years. His second-place finishes came in 2014 to multiple winner Roger Skeete, twice to Jamaica’s Jeff Panton (2017 & ‘18) and most recently in 2020, less than 10 seconds behind Block. He has another seven top 10 finishes to his credit, including third in RB22, and won Group N in 2010, coming home ninth overall.
While he has won other island events, including the 2016 Sunoco Shakedown Stages and the 2020 BRC Winter Rally, the island’s premier event has so far eluded Swann: “I still have the ambition to win Rally Barbados and feel it’s one that I should have won in the WRC years. With the R5 class being so competitive recently, though, it’s going to take a perfect rally and, as always, a little bit of luck!”
Swann’s plans for RB25 are taking shape: “This will be the first time I’ve used the same R5 for a second season, which will help build our pace from the get-go.” Woodburn is increasing his involvement, too, explains Swann: “This year we will kick the season off together for the first time with the East Riding Stages in February, which is now the first round of the British Rally Championship. And Woody is going to do King of the Hill which is a major part of our RB preparations, as we haven’t done this together in past.”
Woodburn, who won the Ford Fiesta Rally3 Trophy and ERC3 titles last year with Czech driver Filip Kohn, is stepping up this year to a partial WRC2 programme with former Dutch Champion Bernhard Ten Brinke in a Fabia RS Rally2: “I can't announce which events yet other than the Swedish Rally in February, but we are starting on the snow and ice in Norway with Rally Finnskog, using it as a test ahead of WRC Sweden.
“I'm buzzing to be heading back to Barbados; these trips are made even better by the people that I spend the time there with. Rob is competitive and takes the event seriously and wants to do the best he can, so it’s nice when everything starts to click and the times start to come. Unfortunately, we got caught in the heavy rainfall mid-stage on slicks in 2024 and ended up sliding off the road and dropping time. It'll be nice to right that wrong and hopefully have a better event and a better result.”
As well as finishing 15th in RB24, Woodburn had finished fifth in the previous two years, in Swann’s former Fabia R5 in RB23 and with Scotland’s Andy Scott (Ford Fiesta S2000) in RB22. His introduction to island rallying came a decade ago, when he finished second in the 2014 Valvoline Rally with the late Paul Bourne (Ford Focus WRC06).

 Rally Barbados is a tarmac rally, with around 20 special stages run on the island’s intricate network of public roads, under road closure orders granted by the Ministry of Transport & Works; the previous Sunday’s King of the Hill ‘shakedown’, run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, the results of which are used to seed the running order for the main event.

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