Why Britain needs a crazy WRC round

What happens if we don't go down to the woods today?

The Teddy Bears' picnic is all well and good, but what happens if the woods are shut in November?

Simple - Britain's round of the World Rally Championship dies.

For the last 54 years, the RAC Rally - or the new-fangled Rally GB, if you prefer - has lived its life between the trees. But now, more than ever, rallying is under intense scrutiny from the keepers of those trees. Last year's Jim Clark Rally accident, which left three dead, prompted a government-level investigation into what a rally really is.

And the upshot is a set of recommendations from the Scottish Motor Sport Safety Review about how events are run - and a no-holds-barred warning from the Forestry Commission. The message is clear: keep rallying's house in order or it'll lose the ability to compete on some of the world's finest gravel roads.

And be under no illusion, the British forests are right up there with Whaanga Coast on New Zealand's North Island or Argentina's classic El Condor.

In this week's AUTOSPORT magazine, I was given free rein to rule over the route for the 2019 RAC Rally - that's the first one outside of the next three-year deal with Wales. As you can see, my first mission was to sort the moniker. It's not Rally GB.

A full-scale tour of Britain would be a huge test for WRC drivers © LAT

The next thing was take it out of Wales. Not completely - I love Wales and it absolutely deserves its place on the itinerary.

Trouble is, for the watching world outside of the British Isles, Dalby, Pundershaw, Craik, Grizedale and Drummond Hill mean absolutely nothing, and that's not right.

So, a linear route it is. We go from Wembley through a handful of stately-home stages before trekking south through Wales in a top-to-bottom day-and-night thrash.

From there, things get slightly fanciful as planes, possibly trains and definitely trucks are employed to lift the event in its entirety from Cardiff to Yorkshire.

From there it's north and then north again, showing the world what it's been missing for the last 20 years.

British rally fans have a lot to be grateful to Wales for. For all the big talk coming from Sunderland and Yorkshire, there really wasn't a workable alternative to the cash coming from the principality.

If Wales had walked, Rally GB would have been pushed to the edge of oblivion at a time when the WRC promoter is clearly looking for flaws in every European round with tradition and history of any sort.

Britain's USP is, for me, the endurance element that comes with a linear route touring the country. It's difficult to play to that strength when you've got to keep the ball to the west of Offa's Dyke.

Forests are key to Rally GB - and would be to Evans' RAC revival route © LAT

I'm under no illusion that my dream RAC route would be nigh on impossible to get signed off these days. But there's increasing precedent in the shift away from the central-servicing cloverleaf format of events.

Take a look at this week's Tour of Corsica for an admittedly fairly extreme example.

We start at one side of the island in Ajaccio, head into the middle for service the next morning, and then way up to the north coast for Friday night's parc ferme. The next night, the crews will sleep on the south coast. The clue's in the name - this is a tour of Corsica.

There was, of course, a unique set of circumstances that took the WRC back to the French island, largely based on Alsace's decision to withdraw funding from what had become one of the most successful events in the series' modern era, the Strasbourg-based Rally of France.

With no mainland alternative, Corsica's European Rally Championship round stepped up, with the help of some emergency funding from the French governing body (FFSA).

I have nothing but admiration for the way the event organisers and the FFSA then dealt with the FIA and WRC promoter once Corsica was on the menu for this year. Instead of falling into line with the standardised format of other WRC rounds, the Corsicans did their own thing. And they did it in some style.

It's not their problem that this made selling telly harder. With nothing to lose, the French played to their strengths and put together a great route.

To make my dream come true, we'd need the likes of GB route co-ordinator Andrew Kellitt and money man Ben Taylor to show an unflinching belief in the benefits of taking our round back to its roots to show just where the rally's real strength lies.

Corsica's back on the WRC calendar and an example of breaking the modern status quo

Take a lead from the French, contradict the perceived wisdom of the promoter and fly in the face of current convention. Take the RAC to as many corners of Britain as you possibly can. Get in people's way, cause a traffic jam or two and let's let people know there's a rally on. Let them remember what wellies in November are really for.

Follow my lead and we can make the RAC great and greater still.

But can we? Can we really?

Well, if we stopped being so reliant on regional backing, why not?

If there was a firm with a presence the length and breadth of Britain such as, for example, Eddie Stobart, interested in backing the event, then suddenly a linear route running from Wembley to Chester via Fort Willliam would make sense.

Although my route might be taking things to the extreme, the idea of a travelling circus would appeal to the sponsors, if not the manufacturers, who would complain bitterly at the logistical nightmare of uprooting monster hospitality units and service parks.

All of that is fixable.

What might be of more concern is the potential shortage of marshals. Current double useage of stages works well because it effectively halves the manpower required by a linear route with only single stage useage - not to mention the extra budget required to pay for more forestry mileage.

A nationwide rally means taking the WRC to the people - via roadside services © LAT

But all of those are self-fulfilling. Take the RAC back to where it was in the 1980s and marshals will come, backers will come, the coverage will come and before we know it we'll be waking up on the banks of Loch Ness not having slept for three nights. Happy days (and nights).

Going back to the top of this story and the concern for our ability to retain the use of Forestry Commission roads. One answer might be closed public roads. With legislation apparently getting ever closer to devolve power to suspend the Road Traffic Act to local government, maybe the answer would be to make a nationwide road rally.

I'm sure we can all think of a handful of stages off the top of our heads. You know, the ones you ragged your mother's MG Metro through when you were 17 and a bit. Or was that just me?

And that's a possibility. Britain is blessed with some epic whites and B-roads, but I'm afraid that simply wouldn't cut it. An all-asphalt RAC? I don't think so.

And nor would the promoter - much as they don't like dirty cars, they're not keen on any more asphalt rallies.

No, the only way forward is mine, I'm afraid. Say goodbye to sleep and hello to the two million folk who'll soon be returning to the side of an RAC road near you.