Rally - Problems

For those of you who may be expecting the same level of coverage on this year’s Tunnock’s Mull Rally (see last year’s posts at this time) it’s not going to be possible and the Forum will have a different look to it as well. Due to a conflict with the ‘day job’ I won’t arrive on the island till Friday afternoon, so will miss the Forum and Scrutineering. That means I will miss out on much of the build-up and it will be straight into the rally itself.

There will however be a Forum in the Aros Hall on Thursday night and that will be in the capable hands of Colin Clark at Rally Radio. It would also appear that there will be a full team on the island from iRally so you won’t miss much. In fact, there might be little need for me at all and maybe it’s time to step back and let new faces and new media do the job better.

Anyway, you can blame Mercedes-Benz for my late arrival. They have chosen to launch their brand new Vito van to Europe’s top LCV press (plus me) in Spain this week. Sadly, they have only just now realised the error of their ways and are very concerned that their own industrially significant news may well be scuppered by major matters of motorsporting importance on the north western fringes of Europeland.

They hadn’t realised that their launch event clashed with ‘the Best Rally – in the World’ and have asked that a Mull calendar be sent to them so they don’t do it again. As for the van, it sounds intriguing. It will be offered in FWD, RWD or 4WD with a choice of 1.6 and 2 litre engines.

The plan at present is to depart tomorrow, be back Thursday night, an early start on Friday morning to Corran and then just take it from there and see how things go.