Motorsport UK Chair David Richards CBE reflects on the successes and highlights of 2024 and explains how digital, and sustainability changes have put UK motorsport on solid ground.

The past year saw significant progress made towards our long-term goals of delivering a more inclusive, accessible and sustainable future for UK motorsport. We enjoyed some impressive success on the track – with no less than 21 champions within the Motorsport UK Academy – and we saw countless exceptional events run by our many member Clubs, but equally importantly, we put in place some major keystones to ensure our sport moves into 2025 with strong foundations for the future.

Anyone with a competition licence will have seen we have now digitised the application process through the roll-out of the motorsport management platform, powered by Sport:80. I have already had quite a few people tell me how much more straightforward they have found it all this year. We will continue to establish and support members with its roll-out into this year, while also moving on to overhauling our existing website and further improving how members digitally engage with the organisation.

The roll-out of the new National Competition Rules (NCR) was another major achievement, the result of a very big consultative process. Over the last 20 years, I’ve been involved in two or three attempts to rewrite these, so to see it finally achieved – with several trial runs last year ahead of a full implementation this season – was very satisfying! Rationalising all the rules across all the different disciplines and cross referencing everything has been an extraordinary process, and I applaud the team who have so methodically gone about it.

I was lucky to enjoy a wide range of different British motorsport this year, from taking part in the Land’s End Trial – a fantastic experience until we failed to get up the very last hill! – to promoting Motorsport UK and our industry to everyone I met at the British Grand Prix. The underlying element to every event I attended or participated in was not the competitors or the cars, it was the people behind it all. The camaraderie we have in UK motorsport is extraordinary and it showcases the real depth we have in our culture.

I was particularly pleased to attend the FIA Karting World Championship on its return to the UK for the first time since 2017. The calibre of talent and professionalism was extraordinary to see. Again, the organisation is what stood out and everyone spoke so highly of the way it was run. Likewise, the Rali Ceredigion in mid-Wales, where a team of people who wanted to do something for the local community put on an event that would be a credit to any country anywhere in Europe.

Opening the Door

There is no doubting motorsport’s popularity in the UK – last year there was close to 4,000 Motorsport UK-Permitted Events around the country – but as any Club organiser will know, putting on events and growing participation in a world with an increasing number of distractions can be a major challenge. This is where the relationship between Motorsport UK and its members plays a vital role, and in this coming year, we will be working on ways to further improve our engagement with the community and the support we can offer.

Ultimately, we are here to serve the interests of the Clubs and our licence holders, and to do so in the best way possible we encourage constructive feedback. Myself, our CEO Hugh Chambers, and many others throughout the team, regularly participate or attend UK events and that on-theground experience – talking to members – is a vital part of our responsibility. Since I took over, I would like to think we have become a far more responsive organisation, and one that is proactive in the support, which is a fundamental part of our duty.

In the current environment, everyone is very cost conscious and we are cautious not to add additional burdens and costs to participating on motorsport. Getting the entry level of motorsport as affordable as possible is key to its future, and the StreetCar initiative has been a great starting point for this. It is showing people you don’t need to have huge amounts of gear to compete – you can actually do it in the car you commute in every day – and all you need is a free RS Clubman licence, plus an entry that costs less than a tank of fuel.

The number of those events is building year on year, participation is growing, and I’d like to thank the 75 Clubs that have taken this on so far, because they are broadening the base of the pyramid and reaching out to far more people than we have ever done before. Beyond this, I also encourage Clubs to open their doors and look at events that might not be considered ‘true’ motorsport events, such as general car gatherings, as this can also broaden the appeal and encourage more participation from a wider spectrum of people.

The more people we reach out to, the more we will improve diversity within the motorsport community and we have put in a lot of work into encouraging this in recent years. Last year, for example, almost 1,500 people were involved in Girls on Track while the F1 Academy’s Discover your Drive Karting programme saw a 400 per cent increase in girls taking part in karting at TeamSport venues. This year we have just launched our Inclusion Hub, bringing together complemantary organisations to improve racial diversity, while IntoSpeed, operated by the British Women Racing Drivers Club, will open the door to low-cost motorsport for women.

It would be great to see 50/50 male/female fields and a wide range of minority groups in motorsport but we can’t change society overnight. It’s going to be generational and it starts at the youngest of age groups. In the playground, for example, until girls and boys are out there playing football together, there will not be full equality in that sport. It’s the same in racing, but my granddaughter is four years old now and with the progress that is being made, I like to think she will be racing on an equal basis with boys when she is 18 years old.

It’s a step-by-step process. Anyone who ever thought things were going to change radically in the next 12 months or even five years is mistaken, but we’re doing far more today than we’ve ever done in the past and we’ll continue to do that because we are, once again, setting the example on a worldwide stage in this area. Everybody is looking at us to see the progress we have been making, complimenting us and following our lead, and we will continue to work hard in this area to accelerate that change.

One of the great innovations for diversity in the last few years has been the creation of the British Indoor Kart Championship, which now stands as the biggest motorsport championship in the world, with more than 5,500 participants. It takes motorsport to 35 towns and cities nationwide, opening it up to people who had never ever thought that they could ever compete. It is democratising participation, and it is seeing an increasingly diverse participation.

The other route to reaching a broader church is through flagship international events that are run in the UK, because they raise awareness and build a profile for motorsport. The British Grand Prix attracted a record crowd of nearly half a million fans last year, who were able to witness a top-three lock-out of British drivers on the grid and the first Lewis Hamilton victory since 2021. Again, a fantastic demonstration of the talent we have in this country.

For me, it was a vital event to promote the work of Motorsport UK and I spent a lot of time speaking to local and national politicians and key stakeholders about the sport and the industry it supports. I would very much like to see more of these world-class events coming to the UK – a return of the World Endurance Championship to Silverstone, for example, and, of course, the World Rally Championship coming back to the UK. I could never treat that as anything less than a big priority and we’re exploring different avenues to do so.

We have got to be clear, though, that all these big events must be commercially viable. We are a not-for-profit organisation, and it would be inappropriate for a governing body to spend a disproportionate amount of its funds on one particular category of the sport. When it comes to the higher levels, events have to stand on their own two feet. We can put efforts in to get them to happen, but our main priority is to build the grassroots and to develop the sport at that level, to give the opportunity for as many people as possible to participate.

Supporting Future Stars

As part of our continuing drive to find ways to build awareness, we saw the launch of the National Motorsport Week initiative last year, and what an amazing success it was. During the elongated week, we had more than 130 events taking place across the UK, ranging from the high-profile Goodwood Festival of Speed and London’s Formula E decider, to rounds of the British Hillclimb and Autotest Championships, putting a focused spotlight on the sport.

The event is a great initiative to reach out to the communities we would not normally talk to, and to engage with people who perhaps see motorsport as unattainable, who watch F1 but don’t know how to get involved. After seeing so many high-profile events and Clubs getting involved in the first edition, we want to engage even more Clubs for the second, which takes place on 10-20 July, and to turn that awareness into active participation.

The more people we get involved in motorsport, the more opportunities there will be to create future stars – and that is something the Motorsport UK Academy has done to record-breaking levels this year. The last edition of this magazine had a list of Academy Champions and when I went through it to see how many I had met I think it was only about half of them, which that gives an idea of the range of disciplines involved, and just how successful it has been in helping people get on those first rungs of the ladder.

Motorsport is far more professional at all levels these days, so the Academy, and the support we give to young drivers outside of that, is another important part of our role. If you turn the clock back to my era of participation, we just jumped in a car and off we went. We never gave much thought to the fitness, discipline and all the other aspects involved. Those are the things we work hard to support with for all young drivers, because competing at any level now is not easy. We have actively sought experience and knowledge from outside of motorsport and incorporated it into this support network. Some of the trainers we use in the Academy, for example, have been brought up in other sports and have introduced new techniques. Hugh himself was part of the British Olympic Association before he joined us as CEO, and he has seen how motorsport, and our organisation, can benefit from the experience of other disciplines.

We saw some landmark successes in the British Championships last year across a wide range of disciplines, with Alastair Moffatt clinching his tenth Autotest title, Andy Robinson sealing his ninth British Drag Racing crown and Chris Ingram adding his name alongside legends like Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Elfyn Evans on the British Rally Championship trophy. Off-road, we also saw the successful return of the British Cross-Country Championship and in single-seaters Abbi Pulling became the first woman driver to win a British F4 race, while Deagan Fairclough took recordbreaking 14 wins on his way to the title.

The diverse range of talent in British motorsport was demonstrated on an international stage at the FIA Motorsport Games – motorsport’s version of the Olympics or World Cup. The event saw 82 different nations compete in 26 different categories and the 24 members of Team UK represented our biggest representation to date. To come home with a medal haul of two gold, three silver and two bronze was an impressive feat, and one that cemented UK motorsport’s place on the world stage.

I like to think that a lot of the success we are currently having in British motorsport is due to the Motor Club network we have in this country, the infrastructure and, hopefully, the support and professionalism that Motorsport UK brings to that as well. One of the things that perhaps many Club members don’t realise is how much the UK is looked at by other governing bodies around the world as the benchmark on which to mirror themselves.

I speak to so many people at different international meetings who follow everything we are doing and do their best to copy the ways we go about supporting the sport in our country, be that copying our NCR for applying the regulations to different activities or looking at how we start up in karting and other categories of the sport. I take that with a great amount of pride, as should all our Clubs in this country, and we should never forget that.

Seeking a Sustainable Future

As important as it is to be a benchmark in participation and organisation, I also see it as equally vital for us to lead the way when it comes to the environment and sustainable racing. This is another area that has taken significant focus in the past year and as we move forward into an increasingly climate-conscious word, I cannot overstate how important sustainability is for the future of all motorsport in the UK and beyond.

I do not want to be alarmist, but if we don’t take this seriously, if we don’t look at every aspect of our sport to see how we can give sustainability the importance it deserves, we have the potential to end up like fox hunting. One of the most stand-out elements I saw at the Rali Ceredigion was the importance the organisers placed on developing strong underlying environmental credentials, making that the mainstay of the entire platform for their event, and I encourage other events to take that as a lead.

We are working hard to help Clubs implement sustainability aspects in simple and cost-effective ways and we will be coming up with lots of ideas and guidance over the next 12 months – but let’s not think for one minute that we are the only party that develop these suggestions. In fact, a lot of great ideas come from Clubs themselves and many are way ahead of the game on this. I hope this year we can share knowledge and show how relatively straightforward so many of these quick wins are to implement.

You might not think it is necessary today, but when you come to be challenged it will make a difference. More than likely it will be your children or grandchildren asking whether you are behaving appropriately, whether you are doing the right thing. We must do whatever we can to do that – whether it is making sure the environment we use is looked after properly, supporting local community initiatives, or driving with sustainable fuels to reduce our carbon footprint. All these elements are vitally important for the future of our sport.

This past year, for example, we launched our sustainable fuels consultation, seeking feedback on proposals for all specialist racing fuels to contain a minimum of 50 per cent sustainable content by 2026, with a roadmap to 100 per cent fossil-free racing fuels by 2030. This is not something we have just dictated – even though I and all the executive team and the board passionately believe in it. It would be wrong of us to mandate this automatically, which is why it went out to Clubs and members for consultation so we could obtain their valuable feedback.

Sustainable fuels are available right now from a bio source and in the longer term we will see more e-fuels – fuels that are synthetically made using captured carbon dioxide and water – coming into the system as well. Right now, these fuels are expensive, and there is no getting away from that, but they are no more expensive than some of the expensive fossil-based racing fuels people have been using – and they are a far more sensible alternative.

Last year, sustainable fuels were used in the UK in the Race of Remembrance, the British Touring Car Championship, the Goodwood Revival, and Formula Student – to name just a few events – and I believe that soon many categories will become fast adopters. After all, our sport is a place for innovation and adaption. In reality, fuel is a relatively low part of the costs for many events, so I hope this will be embraced as an obvious step in the right direction and that, again, the UK can lead the way.

Ultimately, sustainable fuels are just the tip of the iceberg. The consultation is a recognition of how important it is for us to treat all aspects of the environment as one of our biggest priorities across the entire motorsport spectrum. We have developed toolkits to support this and I encourage clubs to use our Carbon Calculator tool to understand your impact and how you can reduce it and to strive to attain our Sustainability Accreditation.

We have got to do as much as we possibly can to defend our right to continue to go motor racing, and if that requires making compromises in certain areas, putting in some extra effort or managing marginal cost increases, that’s a very small price to pay. Personally, I have burned an awful lot of fossil fuels in my life, and I want to make sure that from here on in, I repair everything I do. At the end of the day, I don’t want my granddaughter to be challenging me that I haven’t done the best I could.

I measure success by the broad range of activities that go on in this country, the following they have and the innovation taking place across the organisation. I am particularly proud of how we embraced a wide-ranging series of karting championships into a very robust and over-subscribed British Championship and, equally, by how the British Formula 4 Championship has become one of the top series in Europe since we took it over. Along with StreetCar, which is providing a cost-effective route into the sport, I hope that this pathway will ultimately encourage great participation at all levels of racing in the future.

As we enter the next quarter of a century, I cannot emphasise how important the grassroots level is to our future. I am looking forward to getting back out there to as many events as I can this season, but in a year where there is a general pressure on the cost of living in the UK, and participation in motorsport is often a discretionary spend, we need to do all we can to make it as easy and affordable as we can to participate. After all, only then will we ensure UK motorsport can continue to fly the flag for the next quarter century and beyond.