The World Rally Championship will open with the Rally of Ireland in 2009 and organisers believe that it can become a classic motorsport event with an assured future writes Justin Hynes
JOHN NAYLOR looks a happy man. Bright sunshine forces him to shade his eyes with the flat of his hand. With the other he's drawing animated circles in the freezing Welsh air. Underfoot, light frost gives way to ground-up gravel and mud. Perfect rallying weather, the kind of conditions he's likely to see replicated in just over four weeks time in Sligo, when the opening round of the 2009 World Rally Championship returns to Ireland.
Naylor is here on a "meet and greet" mission, beetling from one team service area to another, stopping in to talk to FIA officials, checking in with the sport's senior personnel.
"Dotting i's and crossing t's" he says a little breathlessly. "There's a hell of a lot to do: check every team's requirements; make sure they get what they want, that they have enough space to work. If one needs less, another needs more. Like one guy said to me - can I just have one more little metre".
Dressed in the purple and green jacket of Rally Ireland and Fáilte Ireland, Naylor looks in his element, but it's not entirely true. This is a learning curve for the rally's new event director. It's just a few short months since Naylor took on the role of co-ordinating the running of what the organisation bills as "Ireland's biggest sporting event".
The change was swift. With little preamble, the initiators of the event, Seán O'Connor and Ronan Morgan, bowed out, with Motorsport Ireland taking over the reins. Rumour suggested that the handover was not without rancour. Whatever the causes, organisation of the rally now rests with Naylor.
Since July his task has been to keep the event rolling, copper-fastening the grant aid of Fáilte Ireland and Northern Ireland's Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCal) and satisfying the WRC itself that Ireland could replace the classic Monte Carlo rally as the opening round of the championship.
"It has been difficult because of the time involved, but everything is now in place," Naylor asserts. "It is a shame that the two guys in charge stepped back. It was always my wish that they stay on and they were asked. But they had done what they wanted to do. However, the team that ran the event is still there. The structure is still intact and that means that it will again be a great event."
The rally kicks off in Enniskillen on January 29th with a ceremonial start before competition proper begins the following morning in Cavan. In 2007, the event began amid much fanfare at Stormont Castle, a highly visible demonstration of the "hands-across-the-border" nature of the event.
"I'm sorry that Stormont isn't available to us this time," Naylor says. "It was impossible to get the necessary commitments from everyone. In 2011 when we host an event again we would dearly love to have Stormont as part of the show."
That he talks fervently about the 2011 event suggests that Motorsport Ireland is confident of the long-term survival of the rally.
"We commissioned the winners' trophies recently," he says. "There are two - one each for the driver and co-driver - representing hands across the border. I told them to commission six. That's how confident we are. The calendar is set until 2013."
Motorsport at a world level is notoriously fickle however. With a local area economic boost measuring in the tens of millions, retaining events in the face of stiff competition from countries seeking to boost their tourism profile is tough. However, Naylor is sure that Ireland has an advantage over future candidate countries.
"The character of the rally in Ireland is in the challenge the roads here represent," he insists.
"The number one thing we have is the uniqueness of the terrain. No matter how much money you throw at a candidate event you cannot replicate that. Ultimately, it's quite simple. If we keep on delivering what the FIA wants, what the teams want and what the spectators want, then they will keep coming back," he says.
Holding on to the event relies on more than just the confidence of the FIA. The financial commitment is considerable and the rally still remains dependent on government funding from both sides of the border.
"Yes, title sponsorship is something we need to chase down. But we have to have something to sell to them," he says carefully.
"The event has to prove itself to potential investors. And it is doing that. In 2007, we had an estimated 250,000 attending. But, yes, we do need to build up that kind of department within the structure."
That, though, will have to wait. There is simply too much to be done in Wales. Out in the icy forests, Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala is engaged in a titanic, but ultimately doomed battle against champion Sébastien Loeb.
It's a fitting end to the 2008 campaign, a portent, perhaps, of things to come in eight weeks in Ireland when the seemingly unbeatable Loeb will try to resist Ford's assertion that they will be back, both quicker and stronger in 2009. There's the possibility of a closer championship in the offing and Naylor is convinced Ireland will do its part in keeping things interesting.
"Can Ireland become a classic rally? It definitely has that possibility," he smiles. "Because of the fact that we can close public roads, because the roads do present a unique challenge to the teams, it represents something different to any other rally on the calendar and that's what the drivers, the teams and the spectators want. We can give it to them."
"Getting the opening round next year is big. Very big," he says. "You could say we've moved Monte Carlo to Enniskillen," he adds with a smile.
Rallying: An Irish insider's view
SURPRISINGLY FEW Irish work in rallying's upper echelon. One who has had made it is Owen Clery, who mans the rear-left corner of Jari-Matti Latvala's Ford WRC car.
"My father, Tony, drove years ago," says the Carrick-on-Suir native. "He raced pretty much anything he could get his hands on. First, it was motorbikes but then it was rallying. It's been in my blood ever since."
When he left school, Owen leaned towards a career in the airline industry. "I went to Shannon Aerospace to learn how to be an aerospace technician," he says with a grimace. "It was terrible. I got so bored. I knew I wanted to give rallying a go."
The result was a flurry of speculative mails to rally teams, which initially yielded little. "Then, out of the blue, the phone rang and it was M-Sport, who run the Ford rally team." Three weeks after making the move to M-Sport, he was on a plane to his first WRC round. "It was bizarre. The workshop manager asked me if I had a passport. I said yes, and he told me to pack a bag. A couple of days later I was in Japan. I did think, 'this is it, I've made it'. But that soon wears off - you just have to get on with it."
For Clery, his home rally is one of the more unpredictable.
"It's a bit of a love/hate one" he says. "The surface is like nothing else in rallying. It's not tarmac and it's not gravel, it's something in between. Also the roads are nearly three-dimensional. Also the rules have changed. This year we've been allowed to have six guys working on the car but next year it's just four. Ireland's the first rally of the championship so it's going to be a real test."
Despite that there is an element of pride in competing at his home rally. "Definitely, though it's weird looking out across the barrier and realising that you know half the faces in the crowd."
