Big MG Entry for Midlands Rally

11 June 2004

The Rally of the Midlands based in Hinckley and Nuneaton on Sat/ Sunday 12/13th June is a big event in the sporting calendar for the Midlands sports car manufacturer as no less than 18 of the 76 entries are MGs.

Mostly they are the best selling MG ZR sporting saloon, but the entry also includes one or two older cars such as the fabulously quick MG 6R4, arguably the most successful rally car of all, built in the 1980s to the short-lived Gp B world rally regulations and still winning events today.

Former British Rally Champion and current MG Sport & Racing works driver, Gwyndaf Evans, will be out to repeat his success of last year when he won the rally in a Super 1600 version of the ubiquitous MG ZR. As in the Welsh Rally last month his co-driver will be Huw Lewis.

Still, the versatile Welshman didn't only win rallies last year in the powerful Super 1600 MG. In the gruelling Wales Rally GB, the UK round of the World Rally Championship, he and Claire Mole took a standard MG ZR 160 and won the GpN showroom class outright. Not only that, from a field of over ninety they finished 27th overall against cars costing up to twenty times as much as the little MG.

The largest MG entry however, and the one that is creating a huge amount of interest, is the MG Rally Scholarship. Six talented 18-25 year olds have won the chance to compete in a full rally championship this year in works prepared GpN MG ZR 1400s in an imaginative scheme to find the next British Rally Champion. The Scholarship is a partnership between six Midlands based MG Rover dealers and local newspapers with support from Advantage West Midlands and the East Midlands Development Agency and co-ordinated by Creative Media Communications of Nuneaton.

Scholars gain points from their finishing positions in a series of rallies throughout the UK, but lose points if they damage the car. Matthew Beebe from Nuneaton is currently heading the points table ably guided by his slightly more experienced co-driver Richard Devonport-also from Nuneaton.

Two more MG ZRs complete the picture next weekend. Several weeks ago the Sunday Times ran a similar competition to the Scholarship for their readers. Hubert Scott, originally from N. Ireland, but now working in Leicester, won the first prize of a drive in the Rally of the Midlands. The runner up-40 year old Carsten Birkebaek-enjoyed the rally experience so much, he hired a car for the rally and will be out to show the youngsters they may not have it all their own way.

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