AS Performance NETRC 2014 Championship
It’s all systems go for 2014. We’re now ready for the ‘new year’ and it’ll come as no surprise to most readers, that things will be very similar to 2013. You’ll have already realised that the website has had a little makeover to freshen things up a bit and we’ve also come up with a slightly different calendar too. Gone are the Lindisfarne and Turnbull Trophy rallies and we welcome back the Solway Coast Rally.
Once again we have AS Performance as our title sponsor. This is the 6th consecutive year that they have supported the championship and we’re delighted to have them along with us for another year.
You’ll notice that the NETRC website http://www.nerallychamp.com/ has more images and links, a new page about the past and is easy to use. A slight change is that there’s no visible option to jump back to the ‘Home’ page. All you need to do however, is click on the white rally plate within the red banner at the top of every page and this will take you back to ‘Home’.
Tynemouth and District Motor Club suffered this year with a poor entry on the Lindisfarne Rally and had to cancel the event. They’ve done a lot of talking and soul searching in the meantime and struggled to come up with anything new for 2014. Therefore they decided that as they couldn’t see where any additional entries would come from this year, they would concentrate all their organising efforts into the Turnbull Trophy. Unfortunately, the Army have recently withdrawn permission for them to use Albemarle Barracks for the Turnbull so they are now left without any rallies. Sad times.
However, we have been lucky and managed to get the Solway Coast Rally back after a 2-year absence. The willing hands of Solway Motor Club have been very busy since we last paid them a visit and they’ve laid quite a lot more new tarmac to improve some of the roads on the Dundrennan military complex.
The opening 3 rallies of the calendar are the same as last year and already they’re proving very popular. The first event is the Christmas Stages Rally and it’s continuing in it’s traditional slot between Christmas and New Year. This rally will run on Saturday 28th December and will be based as usual at the Croft Circuit. The format is very similar to last year, 8 stages of high quality asphalt covering approximately 50 miles on this compact single venue rally. The entry list is already oversubscribed and so we’ll start the year with a full entry along with a short reserve list. For more information, go to the rally website http://www.northallerton-ac.co.uk/xmas/
The Jack Frost Stages in association with AUTOGAS 2000 and Cartersport will run on Sunday January 19th and is the second round of our championship. Once again it will also be based at Croft. Entries haven’t been made at the same pace as the Christmas Stages with only just over 30 entries placed at the moment. If you are considering doing the rally, then you will need to get your entry in by Wednesday 8th January for this one. The organisers are promising not to bank any cheques until Friday 3rd of January. The link for the rally is:
http://www.darlington-motor-club.org.uk/datafiles/downloadfiles/Jack_Frost_Regs_2014_2_1.pdf
And finally for now, a quick mention about the Legend Fires North West Stages. Although the rally doesn’t take place until 7th and 8th February and the Regulations have just been released, the organisers received the 100 entries with 3 days. There will be more about this event next time and the official rally website is http://www.nwstages.co.uk/