FIA Ecorally Cup comes to Scotland

Hi all, I'm sharing this as I thought it might be of interest to you all.

The EcoRally Scotland will be a formal round of the Bridgestone FIA EcoRally Cup this year.

While the Scottish Motor Racing Club's website (linked below) gives you more details about the event I thought I'd try and explain what it's like to actually compete in, as I competed in the candidate event last year.

Back in the days, I was a petrolhead and competed in many road-rallies in my RS2000 and Sunbeam. I loved motorsport and followed the Rothmans Rally Championship very closely. To the extent of working for Rothmans at the major rallies. Kielder at 3.00am in November, Vatanen flat-out on the Manx, etc, etc. That stopped when jobs, family etc happened. Fast forward to last year and my brother in law told me about the EcoRally Scotland event. "Only for production, unmodified EVs" he said... My interest was sparked, my MG4 SE LR being ideal for this event. So what is a Regularity Rally? I'd never done one before and had no idea quite what I was getting into. First thing I learned it is not about outright speed. It's all about maintaining a precise average speed over a predefined route. You are timed, to the second, as you drive along a, say, 15km route and have to achieve a consistent average of, say, 28.5km/h. Timing is done by GPS, so you are tracked as you drive. There are 'gates', that is virtual points on the route that you must pass through at the exact second you should be at that point. All done by GPS, there's no markers or Marshals on the road. Concentration and focus really matters. Also, your navigator has to be totally on the ball with telling you, the driver, whether you're ahead of or behind time. It's far more challenging than it sounds. It's far more fun than it sounds too!! The roads used are usually the quieter B roads and unclassified roads, all fullly open to the public while you're being timed to the second. The candidate event last year took place around the NC500 area. Although the timed sections were on side roads, not the main NC500 roads, the worry of getting caught behind, or meeting coming in the other direction, a camper van was real! Remember, we were being timed to the second and would get penalties for being late.

Anyway, I'll happily answer any questions about the event, about competing in it. As I said we did it in my bog standard MG4 SE LR. And we finished second!!! <full disclosure: it was a very small event, there were only three entries>.