WHEN THE RACING AND RALLYING WORLD COLLIDED – QUITE LITERALLY...
Imagine the commentator coming out with these words: “Sebastien Loeb dives up the inside of Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris is scrabbling for grip behind as he rounds Redgate ahead of Thierry Neuville.”
It is a fanciful notion but yet, in the late 1970s and 1980s, the equivalent happened, all in front of BBC TV cameras, thanks to a concept called the Donington Rallysprint. It became a popular end-of-season shootout between the rally and race stars, the racers being grand prix drivers.
The idea came from the fertile mind of Nick Brittan, who had done pretty much everything in the sport. He’d raced pretty successfully, written books, run the Formula Ford Register, managed drivers and knew how the media operated.
“The idea was to put motorsport on TV in the winter”
John Watson
He also knew the right people to speak to in order to make an event such as this happen. At the end of 1978, Brittan assembled his first event, backed by Texaco. It would be at Donington, just a year into
