ANGLIAS DOUBLE UP FOR SOL RALLY BARBADOS 2013

Island rally fans who have been thrilled by the flamboyant antics of Scotland’s Allan Mackay and his Ford Anglia WRC for the past three years will have twice the fun at Sol Rally Barbados 2013 (June 1/2), as his son Euan is entered to drive for the first time in what is dubbed the ‘Anglia JWRC’.
 
Despite a combined age of more than 100, the two Anglia 105Es are among the most lively on the rally scene and promise more than enough sideways action to keep fans entertained. Euan says: “After my father competed in Barbados the first time, he came home and wouldn’t shut up about it, so I had to go see what the fuss was about!”
 
Mackay Snr won the hearts of the crowd on his first visit to the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport International in 2010, despite retiring with bent steering. The former Scottish Tarmac Champion finished 29th overall in 2011, fourth in SuperModified 10, then 49th in Sol RB12, slipping a few places down the order in SM10. Once again, his co-driver will be Ireland’s ‘Mad Mo’ Downey.
 
Owner of the Anglia WRC – the initials stand for Well-Run Car – since he was 14 years old, Allan gave another as a shell to his son one birthday. Euan explains: “I started navigating in the Anglia WRC for my Dad when I was 16, but soon got bored and wanted at the controls. I started doing sprints in the WRC, then got a Vauxhall Nova before me and my friends built my own Anglia and a Peugeot 106 Cup car from scratch.”
 
The Peugeot, called ‘Snowball’, was driven to many class wins in Scotland, including on a single-venue event last year. Euan says: “One of my major achievements was doing the Crail Summer Stages two days after getting back from Barbados with my friend Rory Fraser, who had never navigated before – we were 11th overall and won our class.” Sadly, ‘Snowball’ became a fireball a few months later, when Mackay rolled end-over-end on the last stage of the Mull Rally in October; the car burned out completely.
 
Like the Anglia WRC, Euan’s car is run by Mark Greer Motorsport in Ireland. Originally built as a Clubman spec car, with a 1600cc crossflow engine, it has been steadily developed, as Euan explains: “It was always getting the hand-me-down parts from the WRC, until its current spec, which is now identical. The Duratec engine and the Quaife 60G gearbox are the latest mods, fitted during the off-season.”
 
Mackay Jnr’s co-driver will be fellow Scot Calum Macleod. He is happy on either side of the car, although his last experience driving, also on Mull, was less than successful: “I was competing there for the first time. While lying 40th overall, I slightly misjudged a wet corner on the sea front and ended up rolling into the sea in the middle of the night.”

Barbados Rally Club remembers Gabriel Konig

The Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Committee of Management has expressed sadness at the passing in Ireland on Tuesday (January 8) of Gabriel Konig, as she was known when she first visited Barbados, later Gabriel DeFreitas. In the days when the BRC ran the island’s Bushy Park race track, she raced a Chevrolet Camaro in the BOAC Speedbird Team in November 1972, alongside Dave Brodie and Gordon Spice.
 
A tribute circulated to Club members said: “While many younger members will not recognise the name, there are those who will remember the early 1970s, when Gabriel first arrived in the Caribbean and helped launch the long-term relationship between our small island and the motor sport community in the UK, which endures to this day.
 
“Gabriel had an outgoing personality, so making friends was easy, among them Club members Simon Gillmore, who then lived in Trinidad and raced against her in Guyana in 1973, and the late Andrew Phillips, against whom she raced in the region many times.
 
“It was through her friendship with Phillips that the next stage of International motor sport evolved, this time in rallying. Visiting Gabriel in Ireland with wife Wynona in 1993, Phillips, by now the BRC’s Vice-Chairman, met television producer ‘Plum’ Tyndall . . . from that chance meeting came the first visit of Kenny McKinstry, who twice won the island’s premier event.

Twenty years on, Ireland is the biggest growth market for Sol Rally Barbados competitors.
 
“A founder member of the British Women Racing Drivers Club in 1962, Gabriel was one of the pioneers of female participation in a largely male-dominated sport and continued to race at various levels across the world until quite recently.”
 
The BRC’s message of condolence to Gabriel’s partner Malcolm Clark, himself an accomplished motor sport competitor, and her daughter, Cara, was sent on behalf of the entire motor sport community in Barbados.

Sol Rally Barbados (June 1/2) and Scotiabank King of the Hill (May 26) are organised by the Barbados Rally Club, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2007; Sol RB13 is the 24th running of the Club’s annual International All-Stage Rally and marks the sixth year of title sponsorship by the Sol Group, the Caribbean’s largest independent oil company.

For further media information: e-mail - robin@bradfax.com
web sites: www.rallybarbados.net; www.barbadosrallyclub.com