Plans for BCIC Rally Barbados 2025 well under way

The Barbados Rally Club (BRC) is well advanced in its planning for BCIC Rally Barbados 2025, with over four months to run before the 35th edition of its premier event. Giving an update this week, Event Director Neil Barnard expressed satisfaction with progress so far, emphasising the importance of the adage ‘If you fail to plan - you plan to fail’.
  BCIC RB25, the Caribbean’s biggest motor sport international, will run from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1. The Auto & Rally Show (May 24), where a display of every car entered is the focal point of a huge celebration of island rallying, and the final shakedown and seeding event, King of the Hill (May 25), fill the previous weekend.
  Putting the Club’s current position in context, Barnard said: “I think we have raised the level of expectation from competitors, fans and sponsors in terms of how we run events, so at a minimum we’re trying to maintain that level but also trying to improve wherever we can. It has been vital to have a dedicated sub-committee to lead the charge, but it requires a large team of people who work very hard across a range of things and the Club is extraordinarily grateful for everyone’s help.”
  The sub-committee has started its planning earlier than normal. The routes for the Shakedown Stages (April 6), King of the Hill and BCIC RB25 have already been finalized on paper and work is now under way to create safety plans, time schedules and Road Books for each event. In addition, a non-championship Test Event is planned for Sunday, May 11, to give local competitors a chance to shake their cars down ahead of KotH.
  Last Saturday, Barnard travelled the proposed RB25 route with sub-committee members Kareem Gaskin, BRC vice-chairman Robert Simmons, Jason Tull, Barry Ward and Kreigg Yearwood: “The team have been out checking roads and the viability of what we have planned as it relates to safety, the competition aspect, road conditions, route efficiency and of course how it might affect residents and the travelling public.
  “We’ve already made some alterations and we’re likely to continue to tweak things in the weeks ahead. As much as you try to plan, there’s always something that pops up that you have failed to anticipate. Hopefully, by starting as early as we have, we can finalize things sooner.”
  BCIC RB24 broke records: there were more starters than ever before – 100 – but also more finishers, 67, an increase of 18 per cent over the previous finishing record. And the Rally Club’s premier event was not the only one to set new norms last year: a record 61 started the Shakedown Stages, 35 per cent up, while the Summer Sprint in August and the Winter Rally in November both attracted around 40 participants, a healthy increase on the average over the previous decade or so.
  And those numbers are important, as Barnard explains: “Seeing those record entries and overall interest at our events throughout last year was obviously fantastic, but it also requires more physical space for the increased number of vehicles in service areas, lining up for time controls and so on. Getting permission to use the large areas we need on the Saturday of Rally Barbados and now on the Sunday, too, needs to be in hand well in advance. If you fail to plan - you plan to fail.”

  Rally Barbados 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; the previous Sunday’s King of the Hill ‘shakedown’, run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, the results of which are used to seed the running order for the main event.

For media information only. No regulatory value.

For further media information: e-mail - robin@bradfax.com
www.rallybarbados.net; www.barbadosrallyclub.com
Facebook/BarbadosRallyClub; instagram/@barbadosrallyclub