mgf.be

[Luc]

he 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.