ASP / NETRC 2016 Championship is GO!!
We’re pleased to announce that the 2016 championship is ready to go. And there are no new surprises in store as we continue to build on yet another successful year from 2015.
Once again it’s great to have the continuity in that we have AS Performance as our title sponsor. This is the 8th consecutive year that Alyn Stockton & his team has supported the championship and we’re delighted to have them along with us once more.
Those of you who attended our recent awards presentation will already be aware of the slight change to next year’s qualifying rounds. The sad news is that the Solway Stages is happening on the same weekend as the Tyneside Stages in 2016. We feel that it doesn’t give registered contenders a chance to do both events properly and so regretfully we’ve decided not to include the Dundrennan event in our 2016 championship.
Unfortunately, the organisers of the Jim Clark National have still not been unable make progress with the planning of their return to closed roads rallying and have decided to run next year’s event in the woods again.
There’s no change to the scoring system or the supplementary Regulations for next year.
With our governing body’s decision earlier this year to seed all cars on their anticipated finishing position, the owners of historic rally cars can expect to run further down a field and therefore the option of gravel rallies isn’t quite so attractive. We’re continuing with the class for Historic cars and hope to be able to get more people to join us on the sealed surface rallies. Just like last year, there will be one class for any car that has a current Historic Rally Vehicle Identity Form and is defined as a Historic car in the MSA Technical Regulations (R49) – all Category 1, 2 or 3 cars first registered before 1982.
There’s also a refresh of the History page of this website with a look back at some images of our most successful championship driver, Mr Barry Lindsay.
The opening three rallies of the calendar are the same as last year, and already they’re proving extremely popular. The first one is the Christmas Stages Rally and it’s continuing in it’s traditional slot between Christmas and New Year. This rally will run on Sunday 27th December and will be based as usual at the Croft Circuit. The entry list is already oversubscribed and so we’ll start the year with a full entry. For more information, go to the rally website www.northallerton-ac.co.uk/xmas/
The AUTOGAS 2000 Jack Frost Stages Rally in association with Cartersport will run on Sunday January 17th and is the second round of our championship. This is the 17th consecutive running of the event and once again it will also be based at Croft. Entries have been coming in very well and are already classified as oversubscribed. The link for the rally is www.darlington-motor-club.org.uk/series_home.php?seriesid=53
And finally for now, a quick mention about the 19th Legend Fires North West Stages. Although the rally doesn’t take place until 5th and 6th February and the Regulations have just been released, the organisers received well over a 100 entries within a day. There will be more about this event next time and the official rally website is www.nwstages.co.uk