Firstly, thank you to all the supporters of the Beatson’s Building Supplies Mull Rally for your patience over the months since last year’s successful Targa Rally and Time Trial. We haven’t just been sitting on our bottoms in that period, lots of work has been taking place in the background. As you can imagine much of these discussions are not the most exciting thing to be talking about; permits, insurances, Road Traffic Act for example and are not really the type of things to be sharing openly whilst discussions are still on going.

We can now confirm that we are in discussions with Saltire Car Club about running another Targa Rally. This would be planned for the weekend of 13 – 14 October 2018. Plans are in their infancy for the Targa as well as the hopes to run a Time Trial. More details will come out over the next month or two.

So, what about the rally? As you may have seen from the release earlier from the MSA, the Scottish Government are starting the consultation process with the objective to secure closed road legislation for the whole country. There is a lot of work to be done to secure this and it is not the work of a moment. But maybe, just maybe we may have special stages around the perimeter roads of the Isle of Mull in the near future…fingers crossed.

The Guardians of Mull Rally and the Mull Car Club are still in talks with the MSA and Scottish Government to try and resolve the insurance issues over this years event. Further meetings are taking place over the next two weeks. We will make an announcement as soon as we possibly can as to whether the event can run this year.

As promised in early February here is the latest statement:

The Guardians of the Mull Rally and Mull Car Club are still working hard to make the 2018 Mull Rally happen, but as yet we can’t say for sure when we will know if this will be possible. In the meantime we have planned a route to be put to the council and are proceeding with the organisation, so that if the insurance problems can be resolved we have the Road Closures in place.

We understand this is frustrating but we are doing all we can to make a closed road event on Mull 2018 happen.

We will issue a further statement as soon as we hear any further updates.

The Guardians of Mull Rally & Mull Car Club have made some progress towards the running of this years event. We are still working with the MSA and the Scottish Government, to try and resolve the issue which stopped the event from running in 2017. There is a possibility that the Mull Rally MAY? be able to take place this year. We hope you will understand that these things have not moved as quickly as we would would have liked. But we ask you to give us until the end of February to hopefully get this sorted and get the Mull Rally back to being one of the top events on the calendar. If this is unsuccessful we would still be looking to run a Targa and Rally Sprint Event the same as last year.

MULL RALLY

The insurance issue that prevented the closed road stage rally from running in 2017 still exists and it is our understanding that the only way that we can run in the future is to use the new closed road legislation recently enacted in England.

The Scottish Government need to enact it into law in Scotland for us to use it. Any representation made to the government so far has been met with “not until after the FAI has concluded”. Sheriff Maciver published his report on the Snowman/Jim Clark Fatalities on the 21 November and we have already been in touch with Michael Russell MSP to urge him to make representations on behalf of the Mull Rally in an attempt to run in 2018.

We understand the need for you to know what is happening so that you can make plans and we undertake to update you on progress by the end of January as to what kind of event or events we shall be able to put on in October.

Mull Rally Guardians