“Unfinished business” for Swann in Rally Barbados

Britain’s Rob Swann is aiming to deal with “unfinished business” at BCIC Rally Barbados 2026 (May 29-31). The last of his four second-placed finishes in the island’s premier event came in RB20 to the late Ken Block and he is bringing back the Ford Fiesta WRC that he drove that year, winning the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) 4wd Championship.
 His Fiesta is part of a second consecutive record-breaking consignment of rally cars from Europe – 38 this year, 35 in 2025 – which left Portsmouth on the south coast of England this morning (Monday) on the Geest Line freighter CS Quality.
 The Auto & Rally Show at Bushy Park Barbados, where every car entered is displayed in an annual celebration of island rallying, and the final shakedown and seeding event, First Citizens King of the Hill, fill the previous weekend (May 23/24).
 Swann says: “I have unfinished business with the Fiesta after losing the lead in 2020 when I slid off in French village, ending up second to Ken Block. With all the upgrades and new Rally2 cars, it just seemed a good time to come back with the Fiesta and have another go at the win. I just love driving the car and fans are always asking me to bring it back - Tom Woodburn and I have done well together in it in the UK, so here we GO!”
 After competing in the FIA R5 class since 2022, first in a Fiesta Rally2, then Skoda Fabia R5 and Rally2 evo, Swann adds: “The Fabia is a great car, but with the new model Rally2s flooding into the island and no more upgrades available for this model, it’s hard to compete at the sharp end. The car would still work very well in Europe but as we all know the stages here are unique in their length and character.”
 The first of Swann’s second-place finishes came behind Roger Skeete in a Subaru Impreza S11 in 2014, which he replaced with an S12B, finishing second twice to Jamaica’s Jeff Panton (2017 & ’18). In addition to his second place to Block in 2020, Swann won two other rounds of the BRC Championship, including the Winter Rally with Sean Gill as co-driver, to beat Panton to both the 4wd and WRC titles.
 His GO Rent-a-car/Cygnet Plant Fiesta is the legendary ‘TiTänak’, which plunged into a lake on SS3 in Rally Mexico 2015 driven by Ott Tanak. It was rebuilt in a matter of hours by the M-Sport service crew and reached the finish, Tänak and co-driver Raigo Mölder wearing goggles and snorkel . . . and even scoring a WRC championship point!
 Since the car returned to the UK, Swann has won six events, with a further seven top 10 finishes in a string of closed-road rallies. This year, he has won the Island Stages Rally on the Isle of Wight (for the second time) and finished 10th in the East Riding Stages, his fourth top 10 finish in an event similar in character to Rally Barbados.

BCIC Rally Barbados (May 29-31, 2026) is a tarmac rally with around 20 special stages run on the island’s intricate network of public roads, under road closure orders granted by the Ministry of Transport, Works & Water Resources; First Citizens King of the Hill (May 24), run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, with the results used to seed the running order for the main event.