[1]Long-standing British competitors Kevin Procter and Rob Swann, who have logged more than 30 visits to the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event between them, will return for Rally Barbados 2024 (May 31-June 2). Also confirmed for his second visit today (March 1) is Joe Cunningham, after the trio experienced mixed fortunes rallying against one another in last Sunday’s East Riding Stages in the north of England.
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.
Driving his Ford Fiesta WRC and reunited with co-driver Darren Garrod for the first time since their accident in last year’s Shakedown Stages, Swann finished seventh in the Yorkshire event after a challenging day struggling for grip: “It was very tricky, conditions were so mixed. I lost all my time on the tyre. We were the highest-placed Pirelli car, but the Michelin just deals with those conditions better. I was happy with the result, had a few top five times, and it was good to have Darren back on form.”
For his 16th Rally Barbados, Swann will campaign the Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo he acquired late last year from Sol Esuf, who had rallied it only once since buying it from Stuart Maloney. Swann has not missed the event since his first visit in 2008 and has four second places to his credit, three in Subarus and one in his Fiesta (behind the late Ken Block in 2020). His record also includes being the only driver to win Group N in Barbados and Jamaica in the same year, 2010, a signal achievement for an overseas visitor.
Procter did not fare so well in last weekend’s Yorkshire event, which he contested with co-driver Ian Windress in the Ford Fiesta S2000T in which he has finished fourth in Barbados three times since 2017. In very slippery conditions, they slid off into a ditch where the grass gave even less grip than the tarmac and got bogged down; they did continue for the rest of the day, but a decent result was not possible.
Procter will be competing for the 18th time since 2003, with 12 finishes in the top 10 to his credit and only four DNFs, most notably in Sol RB19, when his first stage win in the island had looked set be followed by an elusive podium finish until the gearbox of his Fiesta let go on Saturday’s final stage, when he was lying second. His co-driver will again be Patrick Walsh, who has won multiple Welsh, Irish or British titles, most recently the British Rally Championship with fellow Welshman Matt Edwards in 2019.
Cunningham and Josh Beer were set for a top 10 finish last weekend in their rare M-Sport Fiesta R5 2-litre, but water pressure problems and a blown headgasket two stages from home spelled the end of their day. They first competed in the island in 2022 but failed to finish in the Fiesta S2000T Graham Coffey had driven to seventh place three years earlier; it was a disappointing result for Cunningham after finishing a strong 10th in the previous weekend’s King of the Hill. For RB24, Cunningham will stay in the WRC class, but will drive Procter’s Fiesta WRC – another ex-Graham Coffey car.
Cunningham was a regular Class A winner in his Vauxhall Corsa in the early days of the circuit-based Motorsport News Championship. Since then there have been a number of successes in the R5, including victory the 2021 Phoenix Stages, third places in the McRae Rally Challenge and the Swift Signs and Shirts Winter Stages in 2022, and further top 10 finishes last year.
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]
Facebook/BarbadosRallyClub; instagram/@barbadosrallyclub
