British & Irish Championships 2024

[Fast Eddie WRC]

A fine 2nd place for young Will Creighton too.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

The thing that frustrated me most was the complete lack of any comms about what was happening. I've been on rallies where things have been cancelled and I can make alternative plans - this was just leaving everyone completely in the dark for no need.

I get that people have put more time and effort in to organise than I have to spectate and they're more frustrated than me, but on a purely personal level I get very few weekends that aren't parenting time (maybe 3 per year) at the moment and today was a complete write off.

I'm glad the afternoon loop went smoothly and look forward to watching the coverage of it next week; I hope this is some reward for a difficult event for the team.

This is spot on and was also applicable to those trying to follow and watch online. The poor presenters were also left in the dark and unable to tell us what was happening and why.


The streams came was across as amateur hour when they weren't to blame. Anyone watching for the first time or from abroad were given a lousy impression of the BRC.

[the sniper]

You could always volunteer hundreds of hours of your time to help improve things next year? Team always looking out for new helpers.

I'm sure we appreciate the circumstances on here, but can you think of many other sports in which members of the public are expected to book and pay to attend an event, which then has unfortunately turned into a shambles, where the default response from the sport is inevitably going to be, 'feel free to try and do it better yourself?'. Luckily this is now a niche sport and we're all in or near enough to the bubble to be familiar with the absurdity of it all, but otherwise the media would have a field day with that attitude, after a sporting equivalent of a Glaswegian Willy Wonka experience...

[Steve Boyd]

You could always volunteer hundreds of hours of your time to help improve things next year? Team always looking out for new helpers.

If competitors wouldn’t block so many roads that would majorly help with things.

Well said!
After 35+ years of working on results on events from SV to BRC & WRGB, I know only too well that without competitors and spectators, running rallies would be a breeze.

Looking at competitors stage times in starting order on Rallies.info (the event results provider) and seeing who got notional times, it looks to me as though there were two separate blockages on SS1, a blockage on SS2 and another on SS3. Without actual times of day at the relevant controls I can't be more precise, nor can I say how long the stages were held up or how many of these had to be managed simultaneously. As you're well aware, though maybe some spectators aren't, when the field gets split and there's a gap of more than 20 minutes you need to put a safety car in the gap before the stage is resumed. There's also the remaining road closure time to be considered for getting later runs in where closed roads are used more than once. It is very often much easier to scrub a couple of stages altogether to get the event back on schedule and bunch the field back into a single group with a sensible running order than it is to try and juggle things back together. It has happened in the past on JCMR, Manx National & Rally Isle of Man and, no doubt, it will happen again in future somewhere. It's unfortunate but it's the nature of the game and when those in Rally Control are busy managing incidents they often don't have time to tell the world what's going on. Comparing the LFNWS organisers to a bunch of con-artists in Glasgow is grossly unfair.

[the sniper]

Comparing the LFNWS organisers to a bunch of con-artists in Glasgow is grossly unfair.

That wasn't the intention. But equally I don't think it's fair (as is always the case) to have little to no respect for the experience of spectators, particularly when they've jumped through the expected hoops, respected the constraints imposed by the organisers and paid for the privilege.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Watching the numerous fan videos on YT last night was a treat and helped me forget the frustration of the 'live' experience. The action was superb and I saw more good stuff in a few minutes than 8 hours of the live streams. These guys had much closer and more interesting vantage points than Special Stage.

I think in future I'll just follow the times and leave the viewing until the evening.

[Steve Boyd]

That wasn't the intention. But equally I don't think it's fair (as is always the case) to have little to no respect for the experience of spectators, particularly when they've jumped through the expected hoops, respected the constraints imposed by the organisers and paid for the privilege.

It may be worth asking for a refund if you'd paid to watch on SS4 or SS5 and weren't able to wait for the later runs, but I don't know what the T&C's on the tickets were.

What I do know, from reading the official noticeboard on Sportity, is that they ran the second loop at 30 second start intervals, rather that whole minutes, which is something that is done to get the field through before the road closure expires. That, in itself, can often cause more problems and as someone who has been in HQ when things have gone badly wrong I think the organisers desrerve some credit for getting the event back on track for the second loop.

[Sal yet again]

Watching the numerous fan videos on YT last night was a treat and helped me forget the frustration of the 'live' experience. The action was superb and I saw more good stuff in a few minutes than 8 hours of the live streams. These guys had much closer and more interesting vantage points than Special Stage.

I think in future I'll just follow the times and leave the viewing until the evening.

Not sure if the majority of the YT footage was shot by signed on media however it does look like one of those events where local knowledge comes to the fore as plenty with a "ring side" view rather than filmed over the top of a hedge. Will have to do a "recce" during the summer as many moons since I was on a road rally in that part of the world.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Not sure if the majority of the YT footage was shot by signed on media however it does look like one of those events where local knowledge comes to the fore as plenty with a "ring side" view rather than filmed over the top of a hedge. Will have to do a "recce" during the summer as many moons since I was on a road rally in that part of the world.

I expected Special Stage to have recce'd the roads better as their locations weren't great. Especially the first one which was basically a straight, half of which was hidden by a hedge !

Lack of local knowledge is a problem if you are attending as the official spectator areas seemed poor and overcrowded. If you find some good places please share them for next year !

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Dirtfish's David Evans on the BRC's 'tricky start'...

https://dirtfish.com/rally/brc/brcs-...-tricky-start/