Where it once stood alone as the UK mainland’s only closed-road rally, it now finds itself fighting for prominence within a very competitive market. History can carry it so far, but it can’t rest on its laurels. However, if the proposed 2024 route comes to fruition, that’s exactly what it won’t be doing. This year could be the year that the Jim Clark Rally really does come back.
For what always has been one of Britain’s most popular rallies, the last decade has been a difficult one for the Scottish Borders-based event.
The tragic loss of three onlookers in 2014 and the subsequent fatal accident inquiry meant the Jim Clark Rally didn’t run for five years, and its return in 2019 was a shadow of its former self – unusually running in November instead of the now traditional late-spring date, and without the clubman-spec Reivers Rally on Sunday. The pandemic saw about scrapping the 2020 and ’21 events,
