Six Nations line up for Modified 4 in BCIC RB25

With more than 30 trips to compete in the island already behind them, four drivers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales will bring a true international flavour to the Modified 4 class in BCIC Rally Barbados 2025. With local and regional drivers already in the mix, this four-wheel-drive class is set to be better supported than in recent years.
  BCIC RB25, the Caribbean’s biggest motor sport international, will run from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1. The Auto & Rally Show, where every car entered is on display in an annual celebration of island rallying, and the final shakedown and seeding event, First Citizens King of the Hill, fill the previous weekend (May 24/25).
  Returning to compete for the first time since 2017 is Rupert Lomax from north Wales, two-time winner of Group A (the earlier equivalent of M4) in the same Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI he will drive this year, finishing 11th overall in 2015 and 13th the previous year. While he hasn’t rallied since 2017, he was a spectator at BCIC RB25 and regularly competes in a 580-horsepower Autograss car.
  Ahead of his sixth visit to compete, Lomax says: “It’s got to that stage in life if I don’t do again it I never will, and it’s the only rally I want to do.” Previously, his co-driver has been Dave Alcock, who prepares the Evo and shared many class wins in the British Historic Rally Championship in Lomax’s Ford Escort MkII. This year the pacenotes will be called by Andy Darlington, who sat with Ireland’s Mick Smith (Hillman Imp) last year.
  England’s Nigel Worswick returns for the 13th time, bringing the Ford Escort WRC in which he finished eighth overall and second in M4 in 2019, the last of his four drives in that car. His co-driver will be Rachael Chandler, who first sat with him at King of the Hill last year, also at UK events later in the year.
  Since first visiting in his Escort MkII in 2011, Worswick has won seven trophies for class podium finishes in his MkII and his WRC – three second and four third places – also finished 12th overall and fourth in the WRC class in his Ford Fiesta S2000 in RB22.
  It is 22 years since Ireland’s Peter Gallagher first competed in the island, as co-driver to Martin Taylor, winning the Production 2 class in a Proton Satria on their second visit in 2014. He competes in Barbados for 15th time this year, having switched to the driving seat in 2007, with five class wins or podium finishes to his credit in three different cars, a Peugeot 206 Cup, a factory-built 306 S16 and the rare Talbot Samba in which he won class and overall Group A titles in the Irish National Championship in the mid-1980s.
  Gallagher drives his Evo VI for the fifth time, along with local co-driver Aliya Trotman, who first joined him in BCIC RB25, when the Evo finally posted an overall finish, 54th, after three retirements. Time was lost with an ‘off’ on dry tyres in Saturday’s rain, then a second accident was pictured in the island’s Nation newspaper as spectators pushed the car back on to the road. Gallagher reports he also had help from holidaying UK crew Marcel Freling and Karen Robinson, who won their class in RB16 in an MG ZR: “They volunteered as service crew. There is no way we would have finished without their help!”
  Scottish by birth, although now based in southern England, Ian Barclay returns for the fourth consecutive year, driving the Evo IX in which he finished third in M4 in BCIC RB24, along with co-driver Sue Plater. The couple retired with mechanical woes the previous year in their former Evo VI, in which Barclay had finished second in M4 and 29th overall on his first visit in 2022, when he had son Cameron as co-driver.
  After BCIC RB24, Barclay contested four UK events in the Evo, finishing fourth overall behind a trio of R5 cars in the single-venue Challenger Stages in October. He will compete in the opening round of the British Rally Championship, the East Riding Stages next weekend in his Darrian T90, with two further events available to give the Evo a shakedown before being shipped to Barbados.
  Already confirmed in M4 for BCIC RB25 are the Barbados Rally Club’s reigning class champion Kurt Thompson and his brother, Mark, in a pair of Evo IXs, along with 2018 Trinidad & Tobago Rally Champion Ryan Pinheiro (Evo V).

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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