Scottish crews swap snow for sand at BCIC RB26

After rallying in freezing temperatures in last Saturday’s (February 14) Snowman Rally in their native Scotland, former Junior Scottish Rally Champion Peter Stewart and father Richard are looking forward to BCIC Rally Barbados 2026. They are among eight British drivers returning for back-to-back visits after first competing last year.

  Peter will again campaign his Citroen C3 Rally2 in the FIA R5 class, but with a different co-driver in Rachel Matheson, who sat with him on the Snowman at the weekend. Last year, with fellow Scottish Champion Harry Marchbank, he finished 14th overall and highest-placed of the first-time overseas visitors, 10th of the 16 finishers in the class.

  BCIC RB26 will run from Friday to Sunday, May 29-31, with The Auto & Rally Show and King of the Hill, the final shakedown and seeding event, the previous weekend. Since BCIC became title sponsor in 2024, the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event has broken all previous records, with 121 starters last year.

  Having been persuaded to commit to the event by Andy Scott, who competed for the sixth time, the event lived up to Scott’s description, as Peter explains: “We enjoyed it, as did all the crew, and we had a bit of a holiday also. The stages were as expected having watched videos, so there were no real surprises. The only downside for me was the cancellation of a few stages for later runners, but that is of course difficult to manage.”

  As it happens, one of the stages in last Saturday’s Snowman Rally was cancelled in icy conditions, although, as Richard pointed out, “the weather wasn’t as bad as many years ago when they had to plough the stages.” Peter finished eighth overall and Richard 33rd.

  Also a class-winner in the Scottish Championship, Richard’s Peugeot 208 Rally4 was brand new on its debut last year, the first of the model to compete in the island. With co-driver Carin Tait-Logan he finished 41st overall and second in Modified 1 to local driver Carlos Edwards (Citroen C2R2 MAX), with fellow Scots Euan Mackay and Stuart McLaren third in a Peugeot 106 Rallye.

  As Tait-Logan cannot travel this year, Richard’s co-driver will be Owen Paterson, who won the Sunday Cup on his island debut in BCIC RB25 alongside Scott (Ford Fiesta S2000), who will miss this year for a medical procedure. Paterson has sat with Stewart once before for a class podium finish in the Argyll Rally two years ago.

BCIC Rally Barbados (May 29-31, 2026) is a tarmac rally with around 20 special stages run on the island’s intricate network of public roads, under road closure orders granted by the Ministry of Transport, Works & Water Resources; King of the Hill (May 24), run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, with the results used to seed the running order for the main event.

For media information only. No regulatory value.

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