The Snowdrop Rally was supposed to have been on Friday 24th Feb but unfortunately it was cancelled due to a lack of entries. Dungannon MC had added some special test into the rally for this year so I had though they would have had no problem getting entries as the pure lanes rallies are getting full entries.
It's a bit worrying as it was the first navigation rally of the year and even with the extra incentive of the special test they couldn't get enough support to run. I wonder what has put people off. I had an entry in because I wanted to support the event, but I did think it was a little expensive. The entry was £30 and then it was another tenner each to join the club, plus £18 for insurance which takes it up to £68 before I put any fuel in the car and the route was only 40 miles. To my mind that is too much money.
I was also a bit put off by the fact that it was going to be very simple navigation and only 6 special tests. I think that is the worst of both worlds rather than the best of both. It was to be very simple navigation so there was no challenge for the navigator, which would mean cruising round at 30mph all night, and then not enough special tests to make it interesting for the driver. However if they try to run it again next year I'm sure I'll enter, I'm always open to being proved wrong.
Hopefully the navigation rally landscape will be a bit different next year too. We had the introduction night for the Northern Ireland Night Rally Challenge on the 10th of Feb and we had a great turn out. Paddy McCollum made and delivered a brilliant power point presentation to explain map references and I think even the experienced competitors learned something from it. We had 42 people register for the NRC, with both men and women of all ages signing up so I think we are in for a strong year.
Ciaran Carey
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