As the entries opened for the 2018 Prestone MSA British Rally Championship last weekend at the Autosport International Show, BRC managing director Iain Campbell took time out to speak to The Checkered Flag about some of his thoughts looking ahead to the new season.
Firstly, Campbell spoke about just how close the 2017 season ended with a title battle going all the way down to the final rounds on the Rally Isle of Man in both the BRC and BRC Junior classes and he is hoping for a repeat of this in 2018: “Come the end of last year, we had the overall championship decide by one tenth of a second on the last stage and the title decided by one point. How would you try and better that? That would be a proper challenge!”
“It would be great for the championship to go down to the wire again. That’s what we would hope for and that would be our intentions, but obviously you can’t massage a result”.
Next, the boss of the BRC discussed the 2018 calendar, which sees the competitors battle over six events this season including a finale on Wales Rally GB:
“There is events this year are only six opposed to the seven in 2017, but we have five international events. Two in Kielder, somewhere that is obviously notoriously associated with rallying. Then we have Ypres where last year everyone enjoyed it followed by going to the Rally of Ulster that this year has a new home So that’ll be interesting what comes out of it.”
“The route for the Rally Isle of Man has also changed a lot for this year. Then finally is our event with Rally GB which we’re already onto our third or fourth draft of route with already! It’s looking very exciting, it feels like there hasn’t been a down season!”
Finally, he spoke of some of the so far confirmed entries for the new season with seemingly a lot of familiar faces returning in 2018: “R5 wise we already have David Bogie, Matt Edwards and Marty McCormack signed up and registered, but there’s lots of talk with drivers such as Keith (Cronin), Rhys (Yates) and Osian (Pryce) about returning next year.”
“While with the Juniors, James Williams is looking to come back along with William Creighton and Marty Gallagher, but there should be some new guys coming through as well”.
Round one of the 2018 Prestone MSA British Rally Championship is the Border Counties Rally, which takes place on March 10/11 2018.