SOL RALLY BARBADOS 2020 DATES ANNOUNCED

Following this year’s successful 30th running of its premier event, which attracted more than 40 overseas entries for the fifth year in a row, the Barbados Rally Club (BRC) has announced the provisional dates for Sol Rally Barbados 2020. Subject to final ratification by the Barbados Motoring Federation (BMF), Sol RB20 will run from Friday to Sunday, May 29 to 31, with The Rally Show (May 23) and Flow King of the Hill (May 24) the previous weekend.

The event has evolved from small beginnings as the International All-Stage Rally of 1990 into the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport International and a key National Event on the island’s sports-tourism calendar. As has been the practice in the recent past, on-line entries will open on the official web site - www.rallybarbados.net – on October 1, which falls on a Tuesday this year, and close in early May 2020.

Following its steady growth over the past three decades, the event now contributes around Bds $4 million to the economy each year, much of it in valuable foreign exchange, and accounts for as many as 4,000 visitor nights at a traditionally quiet time in the tourism calendar. The 80 overseas participants in Sol RB19, of whom 19 were new to the event, came from 13 countries, while there was a record number of female competitors for the third year in a row. Adding the 2019 statistics to those of previous years, the event has now hosted more than 500 overseas participants from 29 countries. The biggest competitor base remains the UK and Ireland, but competitors have come from as far afield as Kenya, New Zealand and the United States.

Sol Rally Barbados is a tarmac rally, with around 24 special stages run on the island’s intricate network of public roads, under road closure orders granted by the Ministry of Transport & Works; the previous Sunday’s Flow King of the Hill ‘shakedown’, run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, the results of which are used to seed the running order for the main event. Sol Rally Barbados and Flow King of the Hill are organised by the Barbados Rally Club, which celebrated its 60th Anniversary in 2017; Sol RB20 marks the 13th year of title sponsorship by the Sol Group, the Caribbean’s largest independent oil company, and the fifth by communications provider Flow.

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