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Welcome

By Barry Gale

Friends,

Last year I opened my welcome message with one word, amazing to describe the response from competitors. Well, that word apparently has a long shelf life as it relates to Sol Rally Barbados, because 2011 has been even better! While we had slightly fewer on-line entries, we have had significantly fewer withdrawals, allowing the Barbados Rally Club to host a record entry for the Caribbean's biggest annual motor sport international.
Recognising the need to evolve to keep the event fresh, we have adopted two new technologies for 2011. First, through partnership with John Mann's BajanNav (the GPS map of Barbados), we have implanted Points Of Interest (POI) into the current map freely available on their web site. Spectators can enjoy turn-by-turn directions to popular viewing sites, while overseas competitors Ð among them, more than 20 newcomers for 2011 will be able to find stage starts and finishes for their pace notes with, well, GPS-like accuracy! Look for the BajanNav link on www.rallybarbados.bb.
The second advance is our new timing equipment, built by British company, ECM Systems, which allows instant transmission of start and finish times to Rally Control. As this equipment is tested and modified, we will edge closer and closer to our long-term goal of near-instant posting of times on our web site . . . target date 2012!
We have also introduced a new stage, Pickerings to Lamberts in the northern parish of St Lucy. While many locals know parts of this stage in isolation, no-one has driven it in its entirety that will definitely make for exciting viewing, while levelling the playing field for our overseas visitors! More than that, it is the opening stage of day one, with everyone trying to make their mark. I know where I'd be on Saturday morning if I were spectating!
As usual, a safe rally to all competitors, spectators and marshals and the Club's heartfelt thanks to that body of men and women for their selfless commitment to our sport. Above all, have fun . . .

From Barry Gale
Sol Rally Barbados Chairman

Click here for the Sol Rally Barbados Website.

Sol Rally Barbados 2011

Welcome to "the best rally in the world" - Sol Rally Barbados!

The final countdown to Sol Rally Barbados 2011 is under way, with the entry list once again over-subscribed and no fewer than 22 drivers or co-drivers from overseas heading to the Barbados Rally Club’s blue riband event for the first time. There, they will join a host of others who have made this a ‘must-do’ annual event . . . first-time visitors from Australia and Germany have brought to 18 the countries outside the Caribbean to be represented in recent years.

From small beginnings in 1990 as a one-day rally for around 30 local competitors, Rally Barbados – it was renamed in 2003 - has grown into the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport international, attracting up to 100 crews, one-third of them from the wider Caribbean and overseas. It is one of the strongest sporting brand names in the region, particularly for visitors from Europe, and a major contributor to the island’s sports-tourism product and foreign exchange earnings.

Sol Rally Barbados 2011 will run over the weekend of June 4-5.