Former T&T champ opens regional entry for BCIC RB25

Former Champion Driver of the Trinidad & Tobago Rally Club (TTRC) Ryan Pinheiro is the first regional entry confirmed for BCIC Rally Barbados 2025 (May 30-June 1). Following a comprehensive rebuild over the past year, he will campaign the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo V in which he won the TTRC title and Rally Trinidad in 2018.
  On his fourth visit to compete in the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event, he will be joined in the co-driver’s seat by Barbadian Derek Edwards. After driving the Evo in RB17 and ’18, Pinheiro returned to the event for the first time in BCIC RB24 competing in Clubman 2 in a BimmaCup car owned by his close friend Edwards.
  Retirement with gearbox failure in RB17 did not deter him from returning a few months after winning Rally Trinidad in 2018, when he finished 18th overall. Pinheiro is looking forward to RB25 and is hard at work with preparations, along with the team at Diego Auto: “We are coming because it’s the best place to rally and we love Barbados.
  “Over the last year, the car has been receiving some TLC and is now a freshly rebuilt Evo V with a new engine and some fresh parts here and there. Besides finishing the rally car, I am also building and preparing a Spec Mazda Miata for my sons to race. They will be starting in March so between work and play I have been busy.”
  Pinheiro first competed in Autocross in 2001 in a Peugeot 205, winning multiple titles, before taking a break, returning with an Evo IV in gravel rallies, finishing fifth in the 2014 TTRC Championship and Rookie of the Year; while 2015 was disappointing, he was on the podium for all but one event in 2016, claiming his first Group A Championship and finishing second overall.
  Before he entered for the first time in 2017, Rally Barbados had been on Pinheiro’s ‘bucket list’ as a regular visitor, initially as a spectator then as part of fellow countryman David Coelho’s service crew. Wife Karen, an accomplished event photographer, had also been a frequent visitor along with their sons Shane, Scott and Adam.
  While Scott sat with his Dad during their championship-winning season and his 2018 entry in Rally Barbados, he has been co-driver to America’s George Sherman for the past two seasons. They won the BRC Modified 4 title in 2023 in a Lancer Evo IX before switching to the Barbados Rally2 Championship last year in a Ford Fiesta Rally2.
  As co-driver to island ace Trevor Manning, Edwards finished sixth overall in Rally Barbados in 2008 (Lancer Evo VIII) and 2009 (Ford Escort WRC), and also won the Historic class with brother-in-law Wayne Archer in 2015 in a BMW 325. When he switched to driving, he finished 18th overall in 2019 (BMW M3), then won Clubman 2 in RB23 in the BimmaCup car in which he had also won the 2018 Caribbean BimmaCup crown and been a circuit racing Group Champion at Bushy Park.

  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.

For media information only. No regulatory value.

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