It could be all over for UK rallying

He took his glasses off and rubbed the side of his head, thoughtfully. The pause that followed was about finding the right words. It worked just as well for dramatic effect.

This wasn't about the right or wrong words. It was all about these words.

"This could be the end of rallying in Britain."

For clarity, I'm not standing in the pub pontificating. I'm standing in front of Motor Sports Association chief executive Rob Jones. If those words needed any more gravitas, they just got them.

Jones is a lawyer by trade and lawyers choose their words carefully.

Rallying in Britain is in a more parlous state than ever before. The Suez Crisis claimed the 1957 RAC Rally, foot and mouth took the 2001 British Rally Championship. In terms of the sport, both represented storms in teacups of varying sizes.

The Scottish safety review has huge implications for the whole British rallying scene © LAT

The current predicament offers a teacup-busting storm, shocking in its magnitude and sport-shaping proportions.

I didn't take it in straight away. Even post-Jones chat, I wondered if it was a bit of sabre-rattling to get the troops back in line.

And clearly the troops - at least a minority of them - are out of line.

When three people were killed in an accident on the Jim Clark Rally last summer, the Scottish Government launched its own investigation into motorsport safety days later. Don't forget, the Borders tragedy came a little over a year after a lady lost her life spectating on the Snowman Rally and two years after a man was badly hurt trying to push a car back onto the road on the Granite City.

Holyrood launched itself into the inquiry. Just a few months later, it delivered interim findings in time for the Mull Rally and a fuller report at the start of this year.

The Motor Sport Event Safety Review group took the best brains from British rallying - including 2001 world champion co-driver Robert Reid and Mull organiser Iain Campbell - and put them together with high-ranking officials from the government and Police Scotland.

Reid, the 2001 WRC champion co-driver alongside Richard Burns, had a hand in the review © LAT

Fears were rife of a draconian verdict as the months of waiting rolled on. The forums were full of harbingers of doom. Rallying, as we knew it, was done for. Finished.

What's actually come out is nothing of the sort. As you would expect from such a senior political level, the review has been undertaken in an unbiased and constructive manner. For example, the economic significance of a packed Jim Clark entry on the Scottish Borders is not lost on those counting the beans further north in Edinburgh.

The review has now delivered 29 recommendations to make rallying safer. Five of those are being acted on immediately.

From now on, the MSA wants to see a working safety plan from any multi-venue rally in Britain. Those events must also work with a safety delegate from the MSA. Marshals are going to be trained - most probably via easy-to-access online coaching. And licensed. Minimum numbers will also be established before a stage can go live. And finally, the way the media works on rallies is also being overhauled, with a more stringent accreditation process likely to be applied in the future.

Put simply, it's all about improving the spectating experience, making it safer.

Once the voice from north of the border was heard, the governing body of British motorsport moved with alarming speed.

This Motorsport News reader's picture of a spectator laying next to a stage triggered a new outcry © Bob Sketchley

Had I missed something?

The Scottish Government involvement had been interesting, engaging and informative. From the sidelines, it was fascinating to see the way the political machine absorbed and quickly comprehended a discipline so complex, diverse and new to it. But it did.

And then came the recommendations.

Granted, things needed to be sorted. But what's the rush on the recommendations?

I wasn't listening properly.

Recommendations in this case had little to do with offering advice. The real message was between the lines; new law lay between the lines.

Jones is quite clear: when government speaks, governing body listens. And acts. Hence the immediate policy shift on those headline five.

"The review could have been condemnatory," says Jones, "but there is no suggestion of banning rallying or banning spectators on rallies..."

Rallying needs the co-operation of the Forestry Commission © LAT

Another pause. This one's left hanging. But rocket science isn't required to fill this void.

As January moved into February and the implications of the recommendations were working their way through the system, the threat took a turn and showed itself in the worst possible fashion.

A rally fan was snapped - and shamed in Motorsport News - lying down next to the stage as a rally car passed.

Which leads us to... "This could be the end of rallying in Britain."

And led me to Bromsgrove.

The MSA called a meeting for rally folk from the south coast to the north midlands, aimed at outlining the current crisis. Bromsgrove Golf Centre was the centre of the British rallying universe for a few hours on March 17.

With the review comes a progressive element; not everything can be done straight away.

The other issue could be far more immediate. Hard as it might have been to imagine, Bromsgrove delivered a starker message still.

And it came from a forester called Phil. Phil Mostyn is the health and safety officer for Natural Resources Wales (the Forestry Commission to you and I). Mostyn was was joined by David Williamson, head of recreation for Forestry Commission England.

The Forestry Commission and rallying have gone hand-in-hand ever since Jack Kemsley tickled the 1960 RAC Rally route to include a two-mile blast up Monument Hill just behind Dalmally station. A year later, the RAC went into the woods, where it has remained. Only a bit of a ding-dong in Egypt in the late Fifties and the first foot and mouth outbreak a decade ago kept it out.

Forest stages are integral to Rally GB © McKlein

Until now.

And that chap lying on the forest floor in the Dean. What was he doing?

It would be unfair to dissect the discussion at what was a private meeting in Bromsgrove, it was alarming to hear some attempted defence at the pictures MN printed. Some suggested certain camera lenses gave a false impression, another claimed the picture of the individual and the car was far less damning; clearly he wasn't that close to the stage.

A moment here please. Just a moment.

Now, I know modern camera technology is good, but I'm not aware of a lens or piece of software that takes a man standing on his own two feet and replaces him in the horizontal.

Who cares what lens or angle the picture was taken from! The bloke was lying down on the edge of a stage watching a rally car go past. Defence is futile in the extreme; there simply is no defence.

Certainly not in the eyes of the Forestry Commission. Rather naively, I asked what the issue was with the FC. Surely, the buck stops with the event, should the worst happen. Err, no.

The Forestry Commission is the landowner and rallying killing folk on its land is not good. Particularly not when recent research has revealed that you are 10 times more likely to be killed working in the Forestry than on a building site.

One of British rallying's finest hours: Colin McRae heads for the 1995 WRC title on the RAC Rally © LAT

Wales Rally GB, like all forest events in Britain, is living on borrowed time. The FC has not renewed its agreement with the MSA for us to use the likes of Dyfi, Grizedale and Dalby. At the moment, we have a single-year extension of the deal until December 31 2015.

And here's the rub. Should we not wholeheartedly accept and enforce everything the Scottish Government says, there will be no new deal. And rallying will be dead. At least in the woods. And it's been a while since the RAC's been anywhere else...

Moments like that one on the Wyedean are precisely not what's needed right now. Now more than ever before, the sport must pull together, listen and support what the newly trained and licensed marshals have to say and generally do as we're told.

And for those looking on from a safe distance, contenting themselves with the news that this is a British problem, think again. The FIA is working closely with the MSA - and has been throughout the process - to bring about change at rallying's highest level.

So, the potential fallout goes beyond Rally GB and definitely has ramifications for the wider World Rally Championship.

The time has come to think.

Fail to do that and our Novembers will be lost for good. No longer will we wait for the smell of mud on the exhausts of the world's finest rally cars. Our chance to see the best of the best dancing in the ditches will have gone.

Forever.

For the latest developments in the UK rally safety debate, read AUTOSPORT's sister publication Motorsport News - in shops every Wednesday