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Jamaica’s Jeff Panton is due to compete in the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event for the 20th time this year, three decades after his first visit in 1994. Driving his Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo, the five-time winner is entered in Rally Barbados 2024 (May 31-June 2) leading a three-strong team from his home country, joined in the FIA R5 class by Kyle Gregg, while Horatio Brown moves up to SuperModified 2.
RB24 is the 34th edition of the event which has its roots in the International All-Stage Rally of 1990; since then, the event has grown in stature to become the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport International and a key component in the promotion of ‘Motorsport Island’. The Rally Show and King of the Hill (KotH), the final shakedown and seeding event, will be staged on May 25 and 26.
Panton’s reputation as the region’s best is well-founded. The only driver to have won all the ‘Big Three’ rallies, on gravel in Jamaica and Trinidad and on tarmac in Barbados, his first island victory came in a Toyota Celica GT4 in 1998 in what was then known as the All-Stage Rally. With a run of four straight Rally Barbados victories (2015-18) plus five more podium finishes and four consecutive KotH wins (2016-19), Panton and long-term co-driver Michael Fennell Jnr are easily the event’s most successful overseas crew.
A huge accident in RB19 in the ex-Marcus Gronholm Ford Focus WRC06 is one of only three DNFs in Panton’s 19 visits, while axle failure when leading in his Ford Fiesta WRC prevented a sixth win in 2020, when he finished third behind the late Ken Block and Britain’s Rob Swann. A regular in the BRC Driver’s and Class Championships, Panton was the Champion Driver in 2017 and ’18 and last year won the second season of the R5 Rally Championship presented by First Citizens.
Panton said: “Although we are unsure of our plans for 2024, we would make every effort to do Rally Barbados as it remains a coveted experience over many years and it would be a shame not to mark that milestone.”
Fellow Jamaican Gregg is one of those Panton will have to beat. The son of Gary Gregg, who won RB06, Kyle is an all-rounder, a multiple Champion at the Dover Raceway in Jamaica, three-time winner of Rally Jamaica and winner of Rally Trinidad 2019. Having started his tarmac rallying career in Barbados in 2015, he did not return until last year.
With local co-driver Orry Hunte in his Ford Fiesta Rally2, Gregg made an instant impression in the R5 ranks, a regular front-runner among drivers more experienced in the category. He finished seventh overall in RB23, fifth in R5, second to Panton in the Rally Club’s FIA R5 class at year-end and third in the R5 Championship standings.
Gregg can’t wait to put that seat time to good use: “Last year was all a learning curve for me, new car, new territory, new driving style. This year, I have more confidence for sure. M-Sport worked hard last year developing the Fiesta and with the cooling package update that was released this month makes it even more exciting. I’m looking forward to competing with the guys in the R5 Championship and Rally Barbados.”
In his first full season, Brown won Modified 1 in the BRC Championship in a Citroen C2 R2 with local co-driver Leslie Evanson, finishing eighth overall with a class win on RB23 the highlight; he was also Motoring Club Barbados Inc (MCBI) class champion. Although he has been around motor sport for more than 20 years, he had limited driving experience until he raced a Radical SR3 in 2019. He switched to rallying in 2022 with the Citroen, which has been replaced for 2024 by the SM2 Citroen C2 S1600 in which Stuart Maloney finished 12th overall and top two-wheel-drive in RB19.
As it had rarely been used since then, Brown has been working through the car since late last year and aims to shake it down at the opening round of the BimmaCup Caribbean Championship at Bushy Park on Saturday (February 24): “I’m planning to enter the RallySprint as a systems check for the car. I'm almost finished with the preparation, just waiting on tyres and a few spares I’ve ordered. Looking forward to this year, I am still learning a lot and am very happy to have the opportunity to represent my sponsors and my country.”
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 & Water Resources; the previous Sunday’s King of the Hill sprint, 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 [4]
www.rallybarbados.net [5]; www.barbadosrallyclub.com [6]
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