British & Irish Championships 2024

[J4MIE]

Can anyone tell me how Ingram managed to start 4th on the road with out penalty?
Seems unfair if road position tactics can be played, with out time penaltys?

There was 15 minutes of penalty free lateness between Main Controls.
This is always an option for non international events, but most usually employed if there’s fresh snow.

Have seen some do this if very very foggy in the hope of catching and following lights of car ahead, or just mind games with close competition behind they could think you’ve had a problem and back off…

All part of fair competition

[Steve Boyd]

Well I think for once the new BRC season has lived up to the hype - we couldn’t reasonably expect much better than a former ERC champion and last year’s JWRC champion, among other high calibre entrants.

And everybody seemed happy enough doing 100 forestry kilometres last weekend so it might not be out of the realms of possibility that next year or the year after there could be at least one 2-day BRC gravel round. As this year has already proved doing more than 70km clubman rallies was always plausible, just so long as there was good promotional benefit in the BRC for the competitors to be interested

Happy doing 100km for the entry fee of a 70km event. The organisers added 30km for free to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event. Would there have been as many entries if the full entry fee had been charged?

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Talking of popular blokes, I wonder if we'll see Tom Cave out this year?

He posted today that he did some gravel driving tuition with Jo's Verstappen before the Rallynuts.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Can anyone tell me how Ingram managed to start 4th on the road with out penalty?
Seems unfair if road position tactics can be played, with out time penaltys?

He didnt gain anything anyway as he was slower as the rally went on. The muddy 'line' created was more slippery than the gravel and the Polo R5 didnt have traction of the more modern Rally2 cars.

[HKSjbg]

Happy doing 100km for the entry fee of a 70km event. The organisers added 30km for free to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event. Would there have been as many entries if the full entry fee had been charged?

If it’s all down to the entry fee then surely it is sustainable to keep it at 100ish km? One would assume the organisers would be making a loss by not increasing the entry fee, yet this year’s event had 180 entries compared to 119 last year and 139 the year before.

I would also assume that although getting more entry fees coming in, that with 140 finishers there is a bit of an increase in the cost of repairing the roads. But still, with 61 more entries than last that would cover a lot of the extra cost involved in this year’s running of the event?

[J4MIE]

If it’s all down to the entry fee then surely it is sustainable to keep it at 100ish km? One would assume the organisers would be making a loss by not increasing the entry fee, yet this year’s event had 180 entries compared to 119 last year and 139 the year before.

I would also assume that although getting more entry fees coming in, that with 140 finishers there is a bit of an increase in the cost of repairing the roads. But still, with 61 more entries than last that would cover a lot of the extra cost involved in this year’s running of the event?

It’s not quite as simple as that. It was a round of all of the top UK championships, that’s the main reason entries were so high. Remember that BRC chops and changed their calendar on a whim the last few years.


Extra first usage costs - not sure of the figure, maybe £900/mile?
Extra 2nd usage costs - again maybe £650/mike or something?
Recce is an extra cost.
Extra permit fees per car is maybe a few hundred extra?

But then you have extra costs like rescue crews, doctors, signage, fuel/car costs for officials, etc.

If it was sustainable, every event would be doing it. All the details I’ve seen was saying it was specific to being the 50th year of the event. I can’t see it being much option in the future or other events, most will make a very modest small profit which will need to tide them over in leaner years.

[HKSjbg]

https://britishrallychampionship.co....the-challenge/ Yeah yeah yeah heard it all before sting in the tail longer more challenging compact route etc

[AndyRAC]

A shame it seems there will be no Penmachno.....And if they want a proper sting in the tail, how about linking Alwen & Brenig, as seen on RallyGB in 2018? Might need a road closure, which is why it doesn't happen.

[archie106]

Sounds like a good route to me, they were unfortunate last year to have the use of Alwen withdrawn last minute.

Plenty of possible stage configurations within Clocaenog/Brenig, the drivers enjoy Alwen, and a single run through Elsi prevents the road cutting up too much.

I don't see much point in linking up Brenig/Alwen, additional cost/admin required for the road closure seems unnecessary when they can run a long stage through Clocaenog/Brenig.

[J4MIE]

They linked Alwen/Brenig a few years ago, was a pretty nice jump over crossroads.

Penmachno is a horrible rough stage, always causes loads of retirements, plus they used a road closure to link both sides of it.