Quote:
The entire final day of Rally GB came close to being cancelled due to a combination of the extreme weather and the discovery of human remains close to the route.
While the hurricane-force winds and incessant rainfall had been a concern all week, the biggest threat to the World Rally Championship's last day of 2015 came when a spectator erecting a tent next to the Brenig stage on Saturday night found a skeleton.
Police established an exclusion area 300 metres from junction six on Brenig - which was used as both the leg opener and the powerstage on Sunday.
Organisers came up with a possible route that would have reduced the six-mile stage to two miles, but were concerned the whole stage would have been declared inaccessible.
That would have forced the abandonement of the following Alwen stage too, leaving only the short Great Orme stage - from which spectators had to be barred due to the very strong winds.
Rally chief Ben Taylor told Autosport: "We were working with the police and our police liason officers into the early hours.
"If the police had come back and told us the whole area was out of bounds, there was nothing we could do.
"The next concern was that if Brenig was cancelled, we would have to cancel Alwen because there simply wouldn't be room for all the spectators to come out of Brenig and go into one stage.
"So that left us with the Great Orme, a stage which we'd had to clear of spectators because of the gale-force winds.
"Losing the final day was a very real possibility for some time late Saturday night and into Sunday morning."
Ultimately, with the co-operation of the police and swift work from the organisers and Natural Resources Wales workers in clearing felled trees in both Brenig and Alwen, the day ran without any interruptions.
"I can't say enough about the way everybody in this event has pulled together and worked to keep the rally running," said Taylor.
"It's truly humbling to have seen everybody so determined to get through problem after problem."
Also later in the article they give a timeline of the challenges faced by Rally GB, largely concerning the weather. On Saturday serious consideration was apparently given to cancelling the night stages. This was my fear at the time and one of the reasons I didn't hang around for the second run, as I'd have been suicidal if I had and they cancelled it!