Rallying in Scotland

We have a lot of different kinds of rally in Scotland, but the most important division is between

• Special Stage Rallies - where the winners are the crew who set the fastest times on roads closed to other traffic on private land - often in forests;

and

• Navigational Road Rallies - where the route is all, or nearly all, on the public highway and the normal traffic laws still apply. The winners are the crew who correctly work out the right route on the map, then successfully follow that route on the road, and arrive at the many controls along the route on schedule.

So we have separate pages for each of those categories.

We also have a section for Historic and Classic rallying.

Some events are run specifically for old cars, and most of those events are navigational road rallies. There are historic stage rallies too, but not in Scotland at present.

However, some general stage and road rallies offer classes for historic cars, and some crews run their classics mixed in with the newer machinery, just for the hell of it, so the distinction between ancient and modern gets a bit blurred.

There are Hill Rallies too, run over rough tracks and open moorland, for four-wheel drive cars ranging from pretty standard 1300 Suzukis to special buggies with monster V8 or V12 engines. These events are very like special stage rallies, but there are differences in the rules - especially about the kind of vehicles and modifications, the size of engine (huge), and not actually needing roads much of the time - so we are going to cover them in the Off Road section, rather than in the Rally area.

Confused? You will be, but the links below may help.