THE?FOUR-WHEEL drive classes for Sol Rally Barbados have received a major boost with the entries from Britain of Tim Green and co-driver Rob Smith and Ray Brammer and Gary McElhinney.
Both pairs will be competing in subaru imprezas, new to Sol Rally Barbados, and bring to 15 the cars already listed for the event’s four-wheel-drive classes on the official website, www.rallybarbados.net.
Green, an Oxfordshire realtor and former Skoda Trophy champion, has been competing for 31 years without a break and has entered his Green & Company Estate Agents subaru impreza in Group N and his Swindon-based co-driver Rob Smith, a senior technician for Ferrari and Maserati, started his career as a driver, but has been co-driving for Green since 1997 and shared his three title wins.
Green said the car was currently undergoing a complete rebuild in readiness for its Caribbean trip, but he was hoping to fit in a shakedown event before shipping.
His co-driver Smith is also the second entry with that name from Britain on this year’s entry list – the other will be driving the Weir Laundry Equipment Impreza in WRC-2 in the category that caters for pre-2004 World Rally Cars.
The other pair, Brammer and McElhinney, are entered in the RB Trucks Ltd/Top Trucks-backed impreza WRC S8, but while this ex-prodrive car is new to Barbados, Brammer is not. He took part in the events of 2004 and 2005, when he finished 15th overall and fifth in Modified 8 respectively.
His co-driver on the other hand, has sat in with multiple Rallycross champion, Irish legend Dermot Carnegie, when he ran as Zero Car at WRC Rally Ireland in 2009, and in recent years, has seen action in European events in Belgium, Hungary and Spain across to the United States in a wide variety of machinery, from clubman to WRC cars.
Sol Rally Barbados will take place on May 31 and June 1, preceded by Scotiabank King Of The Hill a week earlier.
