Colin Hilton Q&A

"The MSA has ably represented its members over the past decade and focused its efforts on supporting its clubs and licence holders with many new initiatives. This support must continue. However, we must also recognise motorsport has been through significant change during recent years and understand that new major commercial stakeholders have altered the face of motorsport in Britain. We must respond to these changes and recognise that the needs and expectations of the commercial sector must be reflected within the MSA for the wider benefit of the sport and its UK participants. To determine the MSA's future role and challenges as the sport's national governing body, we have commissioned a leading management consultancy to undertake a comprehensive Strategic Review of the sport within the UK. The findings of this Strategic Review will be presented in the Autumn and we will then be in a better position to determine and announce our future policies."



"In the run up to the FIA World Council meeting in December 2001, the MSA played a key role in representing Britain and assisting the efforts made by race promoter Octagon Motorsports to fulfil the FIA's demands. The MSA instigated a far-reaching traffic enquiry leading up to the World Council meeting and, since then, has made monthly reports to Max Mosley, president of the FIA, on the progress of both the Dadford Road development and the A43 Silverstone by-pass to ensure the FIA's needs were met in time for the 2002 British Grand Prix. The MSA, together with Octagon and the BRDC, has also been in constant dialogue with all relevant governmental departments putting pressure on them to complete the work in what has been a very short time scale. Having closely monitored the successful completion of the access roads, the MSA congratulates both Octagon and the British Government on the acceleration of the road works to meet the requirements of the FIA World Council."



"The threat to the 2002 British Grand Prix was serious and now it is only the continued commitment of Octagon Motorsports and the BRDC to redevelop the Silverstone site - with the on-going support of the MSA as race organiser - that will secure the future of this event."



"Octagon Motorsports is appointed by the FOM as the promoter of the British Grand Prix and the MSA as governing body is appointed by the FIA to organise the event. The MSA is responsible for all on-track activity during the Grand Prix weekend and is supported by an army of over 1000 volunteers including marshals, rescue personnel and many other officials. The MSA assigns the management of the event to International Motor Sport (IMS), a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the MSA. IMS is also the organiser of the Network Q Rally of Great Britain and several other MSA events such as the annual London to Brighton Run.



"Over the past 24 months there have been three serious incidents on stage rallies in the UK followed most recently by the unfortunate accident on the Donegal Rally during June 2002. The MSA has already introduced a major review of safety on rallies and implemented a number of changes to the accreditation, training and positioning of marshals on stages, spectator management and the training and licensing of senior safety officials. Risk assessment procedures have also been reviewed and updated and a number of new publications and communications mechanisms have already been introduced."



"The MSA agree that there are too many promoted championships and that it is often unclear to the public and even those within the sport as to which of these are the premier events on the UK calendar. The MSA has now set up championship control panels for Race, Rally and Karting and is actively working with clubs to consolidate the national calendar and the number of promoted championships."



"The Strategic Review that we have commissioned has already identified this as a key issue for the future of British motorsport and the MSA. The MSA alone cannot influence the whole international scene however we must bring together the UK stakeholders, promoters, teams, industry representatives and major clubs to tackle this challenge collectively. We will finalise our initiatives and future plans once the Strategic Review has reached its conclusions."



"The MSA has actively pursued Sport UK and Sport England for some years to gain lottery funding for British motorsport. Unfortunately the government and these bodies only recognise 'Olympic sports' and as motorsport is not classified as one of these it can't benefit from lottery funding from either Sport England or Sport UK. We are not happy with the situation and are striving to redress the current status quo. Some of the individual home countries - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - have been more successful at attracting financial support and we continue to pursue the Sport Council on this subject."



"There are at least 100,000 competitors in Britain and of these more than 30,000 hold MSA Competition Licences. It is possible to compete in roughly 70 per cent of UK motorsports events - road rallies, trials, autotests and others - without an official MSA Licence. The total number of licence holders has grown slowly over the past decade at around 0.4percent per annum and encouragingly it is our youth sector that has shown the most significant levels of growth with an average yearly increase of around seven per cent. One of our major objectives is to increase participation in all levels of motor sport and that is another of the key areas currently being investigated by the Strategic Review."