Rally

While the front-runners striving to become Champion Driver in the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) 2012 Virgin Atlantic Championship fight their last battle of the season at Black Bess in St Peter this Sunday (October 28), Britain’s Rob Swann will be using the BRC Winter Gravel Rally as a warm-up for his next outing in the UK.

Nearly 50 Irish rally fans are looking forward to Sol Rally Barbados 2013, having signed up for the first-ever package deal offered by an Irish travel agent for the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport international. While some overseas competitors have taken as many as 20 family and friends, this will be the largest single group to attend Sol Rally Barbados, reinforcing it as a key player in the country’s sports-tourism product.   Barbados Rally Club (BRC) PRO Neil Barnard is delighted: “This is amazing.

The Barbados Rally Club (BRC) has confirmed the revised vehicle regulations under which its events will run during the next three-year cycle from 2013 to 2015. Among the key changes are the abandonment of the lower-capacity production classes and the division of World Rally Cars into two classes; this reflects the performance gap between cars of different periods and allows the inclusion of the most recent World Cars, such as the Ford Fiesta and MINI.

After nine hotly-contested rounds of the 2012 Barbados Rally Club (BRC) Virgin Atlantic Driver’s and Class Championships, fought out since the curtain-raiser in March, the chase for the prestigious Champion Driver title will go down to the wire at the Club’s final event of the season, the BRC Winter Gravel Rally at Black Bess on October 28.   With a perfect score in earlier events, Modified 7 leader Daryl Clarke (Honda Civic) was hot favourite to win the title, which is based on each driver’s class total, minus the season’s lowest score.