Motorsport Ireland Rallies Committee - Proposed 2018-20 Rally Calendar

Motorsport Ireland Rallies Committee - Restructured 2018 Rally Calendar plan for the future and beyond

Posted: August 30, 2017 4:38 AM

A summary and background of what the Rallies Committee-are trying to achieve by the restructuring of the Calendar for 2018, 2019 & 2020.

This Dates Calendar supersedes the list of date applications sent to the clubs previously.

1 Firstly we are trying to build a sustainable calendar for the next 3 years.
2 Our intention was to reduce the calendar with a better spread of events,
3 All stage rally clubs will be equally effected by the change over the course of the 3 year term.
4 All clubs will lose one event over the 3 year period
5 All Tarmac Events will run at a minimum of 2 weeks apart from any other MI permitted Tarmac event.
6 All tarmac and forestry events will run on alternate weeks ends.
7 The main three Championships Valvoline Forestry, TROA Tarmac, and Triton National were the starting point and focus for us with events and dates built around them according to dates and opt out years from championships.
8 We have tried to protect the Regional Championship as much as possible and we acknowledge that some will have to add some events on an interim basis over the three years to keep the numbers to a level as required by each Championship.
9 The overall calendar will be cut to approximately 25/26 Stage Rallies per year from the present number of 33 events in 2017.
10 All Forestry Events will run on the alternate weeks between tarmac events this is to allow the crossover of competitors that compete on both to flourish with in both categories with the spread agreed by the Forestry Championship Sub Committee.
11. Any club wishing to change a tarmac event date will have to do a straight swap with another tarmac event to achieve the particular date they require as all the 2 week slots are used.
12 The Calendar will run on a three year Rota starting in 2018.
13 Some events will have to move one way or another to fit into the system and to keep the 2 week gap.
14 Events on opt out years from various championships will be required to be flexible and willing to move from time to time to facilitate championship events running on that particular year.
15 All clubs are asked to buy into this system as we can't carry on with 33 stage events per year for the next three years.
16 We believe given the changes we propose will give a better chance of events getting more entries will less availability of events.
17 It will give clubs and territories a break with one event from each club out on a Rota over the 3 year period.
18 It will hopefully reduce the perceived risk as we start negotiations in 2018 on a new insurance deal for 2019 and beyond.
19 It will give clubs a chance to plan ahead over a three year period with an assurance of knowing what’s ahead and the number of Rally events that surround them each year.
20 Rallying in terms of earning power is the leading department with in the MI organization If we can get back to a situation of not having to depend on its reserve funds to run rallying each year then hopefully we can get back to providing the required funding to run the complete sport into the future. We need to find a way to reduce the dependence on the reserves funds each year to cover our insurance costs as we have been doing for 2016 and 2017.We believe having less but more viable events is the way to achieve this 21 MI needs to be able to support requests for funding from all forms of the sport not just rallying like it has done in the past with some great success stories, This year MI were unable to do that due to commitments to cover the insurance short falls and excesses due to reduced entries on rallies.
23 We as the Rallies Committee are charged with running rallying in Ireland we have been told many times during the year especially at the meetings in Tullamore and Athlone as the governing body that we should act to reduce the calendar .Well Having listened to all stakeholders Clubs, Competitors & Marshals all stating the obvious that we have too many events on a calendar that is also overcrowded and congested that’s what we have done with this plan .
24 We wrote to all clubs earlier this year asking what events they were running for 2018 and a full list of events was returned with no one considering a reduction or a year out.
25 This plan has been ratified by the Rallies Committee just this week with a view to implementing it for 2018 subject to approval by the MSC. We are asking all clubs to back this idea and support it at the next CAC Meeting on September 5th and work with it for the good of all our sport but especially for Irish Rallying.

All clubs that run stage rallies will be affected over the 3 years of this plan.
All tarmac Rallies to be a minimum of 2 weeks apart from any other a tarmac Rally.
Forestry events to run on alternate weekends to Tarmac events.
Calendar cut from 33 events to 25/26 per year
A three year structure in place.
With less events we believe it should lead to more entries for each event as has been shown in the last few weeks with the likes of Imokilly, Galway Summer, and Wexford ran with good breaks between each event.
With entries fees getting back to something like a reasonable and more affordable cost for 2018.
Together with this 3 year plan of events this in our opinion is the plan for the future. Please support it.

Motorsport Ireland Rallies Committee - Proposed 2018-20 Rally Calendar