Wales Rally GB will this year ‘swap ends’ as it moves from its long-time base in Cardiff to a new home further north.
Cardiff will no longer be the rally's base
The 2013 event will now feature a ceremonial start in Conwy, and finish in Llandudno, with the rally’s headquarters and main service park to be based at a new site alongside Toyota’s engine plant in Flintshire. It won't be the first time the rally's
visited Llandudno
, but the move will end 13 years spent with Cardiff as the event's base, and comes as organisers look to increase spectator and entrant numbers after falling numbers in
recent years
. 2012’s event, in fact, featured one of the lowest-ever entries, both of the season and in the event’s history.
International Motor Sports, the organiser of the rally, hopes that moving its base closer to more of the UK’s larger cities – Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham among them – will increase the number of visitors, and in turn, the number of participants. Other moves aimed at improving the rally’s appeal will include the reintroduction of night stages and the addition of family-friendly spectator stages. A wider range of tickets at lower prices will also be introduced, with a radically altered pricing structure, details of which have yet to be released.
The rally has visited Llandudno before
The new route has also yet to be announced, though IMS promises that it’ll be more compact, hopefully allowing spectators to move more freely between stages. It also adds that the majority of the timed Special Stages will be set in the forests, harking back to Welsh rallies of old, and hopefully recreating the same sorts of scenes
we tried to
a month or two back. Fingers crossed they’ve also ordered extra quantities of fog, mist, rain, snow and mud, to keep the true, filthy glory of the WRC’s British round alive and well. And with Forces motorsport charities Mission Motorsport and Race2Recovery
both getting involved
with the British rallying scene recently, who knows – there might even more reason to go along and cheer.