More than 350 Barbadians competed in island motor sport events in 2024, all of them holding competition licences issued by the Barbados Motoring Federation (BMF) and also members of one of the eight sporting clubs affiliated to the BMF.
While that number may not seem large to an overseas visitor, taken as a percentage of the island’s population of 280,000 or so, it would equate to more than 83,000 licence holders for Motorsport UK, for instance, which is approaching three times the true figure.
So, motoring and motor sport are a big part of island culture. The motor car arrived in the early 1900s – think Model T Fords, leisure trips to the east coast for well-to-do families, ladies with parasols and picnic baskets at the rear. The earliest recorded motor sport event – a hillclimb – came in 1934, but it was more than two decades before the founding in 1957 of the Barbados Rally Club (BRC), believed to be the island’s oldest such organisation devoted to a sport not involving a ball.
The BMF is one of only 10 National Sporting Authorities affiliated to the world governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), representing a country with a population of less than 1 million and, as in many other pursuits, this 166 square mile rock on the edge of the Caribbean Sea punches above its weight. BMF President Senator Andrew Mallalieu, who rallies a Ford Fiesta R5 as one of those 350 island competitors, is a member of the World Motor Sport Council, giving the island and the region a voice at motor sport’s global top table, as well as being an FIA Steward at the highest level.
And the island’s name has been called ever more frequently of late on worldwide television coverage, as ‘The Boy from Barbados’ – an epithet bestowed on Bajan Zane Maloney by commentator Chris McCarthy – has worked his way up the single-seater ladder in Europe and beyond pursuing his dream of becoming a Formula 1 driver.
Now 21 (so, perhaps time for that nickname to be rested?), Zane has built an impressive CV since winning his first championships with the Barbados Karting Association (BKA) at Bushy Park before he was 10 years old: British F4 Champion in 2019, FIA F3 Vice-Champion in 2022, also FIA Rookie of the Year, he was third in the 2024 FIA F2 Championship as this was written after two wins and five further podium finishes.
Zane’s participation in Season 11 of the high-profile FIA Formula E Championship for electric single-seaters (2024/2025) with the new Lola Yamaha ABT outfit was confirmed in September, while October saw the BMF and the island represented for the second time at the FIA Motorsport Games, the sport’s bi-annual ‘Olympics’, when Mark-Anthony Hinkson headed to Valencia in Spain to compete in E-Sports.
Maloney’s campaign has been supported by Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc (BTMI), which added the branding ‘Motorsport Island’ to its global promotion of the destination during 2022 as sports tourism returned to the top of the agenda following the coronavirus pandemic. In recent times, the value of motor sport in promoting the island has been emphasised time and again: BTMI also backed the first Caribbean Caterham Cup at Bushy Park in November 2023, which brought 30 race cars from the UK to round off the British manufacturer’s 50th Anniversary season, the Vaucluse Raceway Motorsport Club’s (VRMSC) Barbados Rally Carnival, scheduled to run from November into December 2024, and smaller ventures organised by the Barbados Association of Dragsters & Drifters (BADD) and the Barbados Auto Racing League (BARL).
While circuit racing has been attracting regional and international competitors since the 1970s – Bushy Park internationals attracted crowds estimated at around 10 per cent of the population back in the day – rallying is these days the strongest draw. Closed-road rallying is a relatively new concept in the UK, but it has been bread and butter in Barbados for years.
BCIC Rally Barbados 2024, the 34th iteration of the BRC’s premier event for which new title sponsor BCIC replaced the Sol Group after 15 years, was a record-breaking event: the most starters (100), the most finishers (67), the most female participants (24). More than that, it cemented the BRC’s recovery from four challenging years in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
Rally Barbados has regularly contributed more than Bds $4 million to the economy, much of it in valuable foreign exchange, and accounted for as many as 4,000 visitor nights at a traditionally quiet time of the year for tourism. A major crowd-puller among local enthusiasts and a magnet for overseas visitors looking to combine a family holiday with some competition in the sun, the event has hosted more than 600 competitors from 32 countries, who have racked up well over 1,200 visits between them.
But those bare statistics do not quite tell the whole story. Just as so many first-time tourists making their once-in-a-lifetime ‘bucket-list’ trip to Barbados get hooked by the friendliness of the locals, the relaxed way of life, the huge variation of food to suit every pocket . . . and then keep coming back (does this ring a bell with you, dear reader?), the same rules apply to rallying. Top of the tree are Britain’s Martin Stockdale and Jamaican Jeff Panton, who have competed in Rally Barbados 20 or more times, but have also visited countless other times for events over the years, while 54 international drivers or co-drivers have competed five or more times. Most bring family and friends, which takes the repeat visits into the tens of thousands.
These returning visitors have made lifelong friendships, not only with fellow competitors from overseas, but also with members of the island’s motor sport family, competitors, organisers and fans alike. And that huge and knowledgeable spectator base is a very welcoming place to go if your holiday coincides with one of the 50 or so events on the BMF’s annual calendar. Social media is your ally, one family group in a popular Barbados visitors Facebook page witnessed their first-ever rally in the island last summer, met up with a group of local fans, enjoyed a day in the sun sharing food and drink and became firm followers by the day’s end.
If you fancy getting even closer to the action, then you can check out the Driving Experiences at Bushy Park, which was redeveloped in 2014 from the 0.9-kilometre 1970s layout on which Zane Maloney learned his craft to a 2.01km Grade III circuit. From Kidz Karting (ages five to 11) up to grown-ups at the wheel of a Suzuki-powered Radical SR3 sports-racer, there’s something for all the family . . . and you will join a long list of well-known names who have driven there, including American motor sport icon the late Ken Block, former Grand Prix winner now television commentator David Coulthard and seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
