Sunday 10 May 2015

Rally - Another concern



It would appear that the more stringent requirements now being requested by motor sport governing authorities will have a further impact on the sport.

In the past competitors have relied on the fact that rally organisers will accept entries up until the last minute to make their events viable.  Whilst some events try to close their entry list two weeks before their event and others the week before, there are still too many competitors out there who leave their entries till the last minute.

That could well work against them from now on. Given the much heavier workload required of organising teams and the longer timescale needed to prepare their route, some events may need to look at closing entries THREE weeks before their event.

Failure to meet this deadline could jeopardise the running of future multi-venue forest stage rallies.

Look at it from an organiser’s point of view. If they are going to commit volunteers and resources to such a huge organisational task they will require some form of assurance that there will be sufficient entries to make their event viable. If they don’t get that promise, then it is quite likely that some will pull the plug.

Why take the risk and spend scarce financial resources and invest time and effort for no return? It doesn’t make sense.

Competitors will have to face up to this. The golden days of rallying are over. It’s pay up on time – or stay at home and leave the car in the garage.

Already thinking along these lines are the organisers of the Jim Clark Reivers Rally scheduled to run on Sunday 31st May. With entries closing on Saturday the 16th of May, the organisers are going to have an anxious few days as they await entries coming in before the closing date.

So far they have received 29 entries. That’s far short of any break-even point. So the answer is now in the hands of competitors. Either commit to the event this week, or at the very least intimate your intentions, or the organising team could well think that without sufficient support to justify their exertions, then why bother?

It’s as serious as that.

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