Historic Rally Reunions Planned for 2018
Two reunions for historic stage rally cars will be held next year, during Rally North Wales in March and the Red Kite Stages in June.
The pair of gravel rallies will run to the new Rally 2WD format and the team behind Rally 2WD is working to encourage as many historic crews as possible to support these Historic Reunion events in particular.
Rally North Wales (Saturday 24th March) and the Red Kite Stages (Saturday 23rd June) will offer historic crews the best possible stage conditions by running all the two-wheel drive mileage ahead of the four-wheel drive cars and the plan is to build significant historic entries by making these two rallies a celebration of historic rallying on gravel.
As well as generating strong entries for the two rallies, the idea of the Historic Reunions is to bring back the atmosphere, camaraderie and fun that was always a key element of historic rallying. Unfortunately, the changes to event running order brought in on safety grounds have fragmented and decimated the historic entry.
“In 2014 there were 95 historic cars entered on the Mid Wales Stages and a total of 111 two-wheel drive cars,” said Simon Wallis from Rally 2WD. “Rally2WD is designed to encourage historic and all two-wheel drive cars back to the forests, but it needs everybody's support to make it work or one day we won't have any rallies left.
“We already have pledges from over 25 competitors to enter Rally North Wales in March, which will be the first event run to this new format. The idea behind the Historic Reunion is to ensure that this movement does not disappear with cars being left unused in garages and competitors finding other things to do with their time and money.”
Rally 2WD is a bold new initiative that has been launched in a bid to rekindle support for gravel rallying for modern and historic two-wheel drive cars. Rally 2WD events will put the entire two-wheel drive field through all stages first to complete their competitive mileage, followed as soon as possible by the four-wheel drive field. It has been created to try and reverse the alarming decline in the number of entries on many gravel rallies this season, a decline that is widely regarded as a key result of the change to running order on rallies.
