By Paul Evans

Double Rally GB winner Nicky Grist would like to see Britain’s round of the FIA World Rally Championship return to its more traditional mid-November date, when the forest stages are made all the more challenging by wintry weather conditions.

This week’s Dayinsure Wales Rally GB looks set to be fast and dry, with dust a more likely hazard than mud and rain – changing the character of an event which is renowned for its wet and slippery gravel stages.

The wintry weather was the worst seen for many years when Grist won his home round of the WRC for the first time in 1993, when he guided Juha Kankkunen to victory in a Toyota Celica through snow, ice, rain, fog and mud. It was pretty wet and slippery when the Ebbw Vale-born co-driver won it again with Colin McRae in a Subaru Impreza in 1997.

Since moving to Wales in 2000, Rally GB has more often than not hosted the final round of the WRC, running in November (or early December) 13 times. But since 2016, Rally Australia has taken over as the preferred seasonal finale, leaving Rally GB to run earlier in the year. Now that doesn’t guarantee dry conditions of course, but with the current sunny spell set to continue, this week’s Rally GB could be a dry flat-out blast from start to finish.

“From a purely personal point of view, I would like to see Wales Rally GB return to its more traditional mid-November date, where we could have some of the best forestry stages in the world run in the most challenging of conditions,” said Grist. “The event historically used to be the final round of the FIA World Rally Championship, and the wintry weather meant that drivers had to take a balanced and strategic approach – it just wasn’t possible to go flat-out everywhere.

“We saw an incredible amount of drama and excitement unfold at Rally Turkey, when the stages were really rough and teams had to think carefully about where to mount an attack. For me, it highlighted that mastering difficult conditions should still be a big part of world rallying.

“Watching the current top World Rally Cars rocket through the Welsh stages later this week is going to be a fantastic spectacle, yet I would still love to see the best drivers in the best cars, tackle the world’s best forestry stages, in the worst of what the Welsh weather can throw at them!”