Celebration time for UK family

THE CHANDLER FAMILY from the United Kingdom are preparing to make Rally Barbados 2024 a major celebration.

Father Mark returns to compete in the March 31 to June 2 event for the first time in 17 years with birthday girl Charlotte ‘Lottie’ McGlashan as his codriver, while son Michael and new bride Rachel will be mechanics.

The Rally Show and King of the Hill (KotH), the final shakedown and seeding event, will be staged on May 25 and 26.

Chandler, from Goole in East Yorkshire, has been away from rallying since the 2007 Rally Barbados, when he entered SuperModified 10 in his former Ford Escort MkII.

He returns with a new Escort he has built specially for this year’s Rally Barbados, helped by Michael and Dave Hawkins, and backed by Gaimster Properties, Clubman Motorsport and Pickard Garage Service.

It is entered in Modified 3, where he will face the BMW M3s of island aces Justin Campbell, brothers Ahmed and Suleman Esuf and Jonathan Still among others.

“As a family, we are really looking forward to the trip. This will be Charlotte’s first event competing and, if all goes well, once she has passed her test, she will be back in Barbados driving. Michael and Rachel got engaged in the island last year, so there is a lot for us to celebrate,” Mark said.

To prepare for her co-driver role, Lottie has sat with David Brown in his ex-works MkII Escort and 2023 BTRDA champion Elliott Payne (Ford Fiesta Rally2) at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where Payne finished fourth in the Forest Rally Stage Shoot-Out.

She has also been tarmac testing at Blyton in Nigel Worswick’s Fiesta S2000 while Worswick is preparing to return as well, for his 12th trip to compete, aiming finally to repeat the head-to-head battle with old friend Philip Burton known as “The Red Car and the Blue Car had a race”.

On the 2017 Greystoke Stages, the only time they have competed against each other in similar cars, Burton (red) beat Worswick (blue) to the class win after a close fight in which their MkII Escorts were so well matched, they even clocked identical times on the one 10-kilometre stage.

Pandemic

The re-run was planned for the 2020 Rally Barbados but the pandemic intervened and, when Burton finally made it to the island in 2022, Worswick was driving his Fiesta. All did not go well for Burton, when a delaminating rear tyre started a sequence of events that included a rear end spin into an electricity sub-station, with bodywork and axle damage, followed by a broken propshaft and dampers.

“Once back at Bushy Park, with the help of Norman Catwell, repairs started and we were good to go for Sunday, which was a good day’s rallying,” said Burton.

He and co-driver Dylan Thomas finished fourth in the Sunday Cup but since then rallying has taken a back seat for the driver.

Burton has won a number of class and overall championship titles since first rallying in 1988, most significantly the West Wales Rally Spares RAC Historic crown in 2015. He was second overall in both the 2017 BTRDA Silver Star and 2018 Rally 2 Championships.

Worswick, who will have Sophie Louise Buckland as co-driver, was a regular on Britain’s round of the World Rally Championship in the 1990s, missing out on a top 10 finish by just one second in 1996 in a Ford Sierra Cosworth 4x4. His best result in Barbados is eighth overall in his Fiesta in 2019, while the best for his Escort is 15th in the 2014 Rally Barbados. Both Escorts are entered in SM2.

Rally Barbados will be preceded by The Rally Show and King of the Hill, the final shakedown and seeding event, on May 25 and 26. (PR/EZS)