Wales Rally GB
Wales Rally GB was the most recent iteration of the United Kingdom's premier international motor rally, which ran under various names since the first event held in 1932. It was consistently a round of the FIA World Rally Championship calendar from the inaugural 1973 season until the rally's final running in 2019, and was also frequently included in the British Rally Championship.
The first rallies in the 1930s were simply known as Royal Automobile Club Rallies and did not necessarily require leaving England. In 1951 the club organised the first annual RAC International Rally of Great Britain to tour the island, and until the 53rd event in 1997 this was still commonly known as the RAC Rally. In 1998, amidst a restructuring of the club and its commercial activities, the event lost its RAC identity and became known as the Rally of Great Britain or Rally GB, with title sponsorship from the Government of Wales since 2003.
The last planned Wales Rally GB was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Welsh Government withdrew sponsorship support. Attempts were made to replace it with a Rally UK or Rally Northern Ireland, held entirely in Northern Ireland, however no such event has run as of 2024.
History
Royal Automobile Club Rallies
1930s
The inaugural event was the 1932 Royal Automobile Club Rally, which was the first major rally of the modern era in Great Britain. Of the 367 crews entered, 341 competitors in unmodified cars started from nine different towns and citiesThe Official Programme explained:
File:1929_Bentley_Speed_Six_Victor_Broom.jpg|thumb|Bentley Speed Six, Hastings, 1937 RAC Rally
Completing the routes held no other competitive element other than following them within the time schedules, which were deliberately made easy by the RAC so that everybody made it to Torquay. However, competitors performed tests at the finish in Torquay, involving slow running, acceleration and braking. There was no official winner declared, although Colonel A. H. Loughborough in a Lanchester 15/18 was recorded as having the fewest penalty points in the decisive tests at the finish. He completed the 100-yard slow driving test at an average speed of, which was found to be less punishing under the scoring system than Donald Healey found by being fastest in the acceleration test, completing it in 7.6 seconds.
The following year's RAC Rally followed a similar format, but with Hastings as the chosen finish. Over three hundred competitors entered, and this time Miss Kitty Brunell, driving an AC four-seater sports, was the driver with the fewest penalties. Over the next few years the rallies finished at various towns including Brighton and Blackpool. The rally was run annually until 1939, after which the outbreak of the Second World War forced its suspension.
RAC International Rallies of Great Britain
1950s: Rallies of the Tests
The first post-war RAC rally was the RAC International Rally of Great Britain 1951 and included an 1800 mile itinerary with tests of speed, hill-climbing and regularity. Although the rally still started from multiple points, the cars were convened at Silverstone racing circuit for a high speed test, and from there followed a common itinerary around Scotland, Wales and England, finishing in Bournemouth. Cars had to be standard production models and sold in quantities greater than 50. Many motor manufacturers wanted to enter teams and pressed the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders to approve the event to remove taboo surrounding the event being only for privateers.The 1953 event was included as the third round of the inaugural European Touring Championship and included nine tests and part of the route was a secret. The tests included acceleration and braking held at Silverstone, night driving at Castle Combe, a night climb of Prescott Hill, a speed test at Goodwood and a new 'garaging' test at Llandrindod Wells which involved driving into a garage and parking, leaving the garage on foot then proceeding to return and reverse out of the garage, all against the clock. An official winner was declared for the first time, Ian Appleyard, driving a Jaguar XK120.
In 1954 and the years that followed, the rally received criticism for being "no more than a navigational treasure hunt" in comparison to the rallies being held in Europe at the time such as the Alpine or Liege-Rome-Liege. These demanded exceptional driving skill, endurance or had itineraries that required a higher speed over their entire route to avoid harsher penalties. No event was held in 1957 due to the Suez Crisis, but by 1958 no foreigner entered the rally at all. This didn't stop the award for best foreign driver being awarded, to Paddy Hopkirk of Northern Ireland.
For 1959, the rally was moved to November in the hope of making the rally more of a driving test in wintry weather, attempting to address concerns that the touring, regularity, road-rally wasn't necessary or worthy anymore.
1960s: Introduction of special stages
In 1960, organising secretary Jack Kemsley negotiated with the Forestry Commission to use a closed two-mile gravel road named Monument Hill in Argyll, Scotland as a speed test. Times were still converted to points for the purposes of the rally competition and were based on an average speed of 40 mph. Swede Erik Carlsson won the rally and was the only driver not to accrue any penalty points at all. His co-driver Stuart Turner is quoted on the Monument Hill stage in the 1987 book RAC Rally by Maurice Hamilton, saying: "there is no doubt that was the point at which the RAC Rally shifted from a traditional "Find Your Way" on the public roads rally to the type of event we know today".In the following year, 1961, rough gravel forestry roads all over the country were opened up to the drivers and the sealed surfaces such as Oulton Park made a tiny fraction of around 200 miles of special stages. With so many, the results of the rally were based more on what happened on these stages. This, with the introduction of special timing clocks and seeding of entries, secured the rally's future and appeal to international competitors, and the beginning of its reputation as one of the most gruelling and unpredictable fixtures on the calendar.
By 1965 there was over 400 miles across 57 special stages held on a mix of War Department roads, racing circuits and other private venues but the majority were in the forests. In 1966, the Forestry Commission increased the compensation requested for the use of its roads and the rally gained a sponsor in The Sun newspaper to help cover the costs, which were already being assisted by Lombank. From 1965, penalties accrued on the public road sections were being applied in units of time instead of points, with the total time measured on the special stages classifying the results of the rally.
The 1967 event was cancelled on the eve of the event due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, so competitors staged a mock rally at the Bagshot proving ground as consolation for the press and television.
1970s: Sponsorship and spectator special stages
Until 1970 there had been no title sponsorship, but in that year the rally plates on all cars carried advertising of the event's newspaper sponsor after the name . In 1971, the event's full title itself changed to become known as the Daily Mirror RAC International Rally of Great Britain. This deal lasted for two further events before finance company Lombard North Central, then known as Lombank, took over title rights in 1974. The event became known as the Lombard RAC Rally, and Lombard's name became synonymous with the event for almost two decades. In 1972 Unipart were sponsoring all the 72 individual stages.In 1971, ticketed 'spectator stages' were introduced and by 1975 had become an important part of the event's profile and source of revenue. These stages were usually short stints at stately homes or other public venues, such as Chatsworth House and Sutton Park. They were popular with spectators as they were closer to large population centres than the forests in Wales or Scotland, and organisers saw them help control the growing numbers of spectators crowding the forests.
The first day became devoted to these stages, in 1976 over 350 miles of road sections for just 14 miles of simple stages. They were often referred to as "Mickey Mouse stages" because of the lack of challenge they offered. Competing driver and columnist Chris Lord used the term and said he understood their purpose, but they were putting drivers off entering. Speaking of itineraries, Roger Clark said he'd rather have longer road sections than have "Mickey Mouse" stages to break them up. Nonetheless, they contributed to the results.
The seventies also saw change in the administration of organisation and authority of the sport. In 1975, the RAC's Competitions Committee was replaced by a Motor Sports Council, which was absorbed by the RAC Motor Sports Association in 1979. The legally independent association was created in December 1977 to organise motorsport events, one of which was the RAC Rally.
1980s
The 1985 event was the longest RAC Rally to date, with a total length of, with 79 hours of driving and 33 hours of rest over six days. Following the death of Henri Toivonen in 1986, limits on overall event length and stage length were put in place. Night stages were still permitted, however minimum break times prevented stages taking places through the night.File:Michèle Mouton - 1984 RAC Rally.jpg|thumb|Michèle Mouton at the 1984 rally with an Audi Sport QuattroThe 1986 RAC Rally was the last European event for Group B vehicles. These highly tuned turbocharged cars were to be banned as they were deemed too powerful and dangerous, in light of the various accidents in which they were involved. In the end, the Peugeot 205 T16 Evo. 2s of Timo Salonen, Juha Kankkunen and Mikael Sundström took three of the top four places, with only Markku Alén's second position in the Lancia Delta S4 preventing a monopoly of the podium.
There were 83 finishers out of 150 starters in 1986, compared to year of worst attrition in 1981 when only 54 of the 151 starters reached the end. This was in stark contrast to the early years: in 1938, there were only 6 retirements from 237 starters.