Articles

Star Rally Historic: Welcome to the Rally Village!

5. 8. 2014 - Jakub Hofbauer, press centre BCRZ

The upcoming edition of Star Rally Historic, an additional race of historic rally cars, will bring a lot of new features. With exception of the rally route and special stages, whose scheme follows previous years, there hasn't remained an unturned stone in the organization of the rally background.

A new service zone is the headline on the list of news. Thanks to new cooperation with a Cream developer company the service park can be now placed right in the heart of former Baťa factory area, where it will use newly established parking lots. Compared to the previously used parking near Zlín sports hall, the new location will set up much higher quality standards. "The parking near Zlín sports hall already reached the top of its capacity and didn't comply with Star Rally purposes anymore. What's more, in this year we increased the number of accepted cars up to sixty and that's number which the original parking lot wouldn't be able to contain," explains Zdeněk Bělák, a member of the rally organization team. "Zlín Rally Village, the new service park in the former factory area, eliminates these negative factors. Each crew will now get its own guaranteed place of 8x7 meters and the whole area will be designed in way which enables to include – with exception of the special stages – basically everything related to the rally. And there will be also space for new features focused on spectators." Star Rally Historic crews will like the Rally Village concept – everything from the road book distribution on Thursday morning over the administrative checks and scrutineering on Friday up to service break, rally finish and prize-giving on Saturday will go on comfortably in one place.

Also the rally fans can look forward to special program in the Rally Village. For example on Thursday evening there will be held a talk show with selected Star Rally drivers who will be joined by special rally guests like Ondřej Coufal and Jiří Kotek, who recently successfully participated on demanding Sydney-London Rally Marathon, or Czech crews heading to La Carrera Panamericana rally, who are ready to pass this special race during autumn 2014. The Thursday programme will be closed with autograph session of these guests, the whole evening will be accompanied by popular presenter and big rally fan in one person, Mr. Dalibor Gondík. And on Friday 29 August there will come also to the competition action in the Rally Village – literally just behind the fence there will appear all crews competing at Barum Czech Rally Zlín, as the Rally Village is placed next to the route of popular city Super Special stage.

And there will be much to watch! Although there are still few days till the closing of entries, the rally organizers have revealed two attractive cars – thanks to widening of the group of eligible cars up to year 1995 in the time-measured part of the rally, the rally fans can look forward for example to a Ford Escort RS Cosworth (ex-Francois Delecour) entered by Italian driver Albano Frassinetti. On the cars' list is also an attractive Renault 5 Turbo, which used to run on Barum rally routes in eighties. In 2014 it will be driven by Paul Chieusse, a France gravel vice-champion from 2012. Star Rally Historic visitors can look forward also to many other interesting cars and names, which formed the history of rallysport. But detailed insight to the list of entries will be revealed after its closing, which has been scheduled to 8 August.

The ceremonial start of the Star Rally Historic will take place near the Zlín town hall on Náměstí Míru sqare on Friday 29 August from 3:30 p.m., the rally finish is scheduled to Saturday 30 August after 5 p.m. in the Rally Village.