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.
