Let me turn back to just finished edition of the Barum Czech Rally Zlín. This event has been highly assesed by the drivers, officials and spectators. After tragical moments from last months we focused all of our effort to the safety of the competing crews and spectators at the special stages as well as to precise education of route marshalls and maximal informedness of all participants. This effort was toughen up by prime Czech rally drivers Jan Kopecký, Václav Pech, Roman Kresta, Pavel Valoušek and many others, who asked the spectators to respect the safety rules, choose the optimal spectator places and mainly to use the common sense.
I would like to thank especially the spectators, without whom the rally wouldn’t be so highly ranked. When asked to respect the safety arrangements, they followed the officials and moved to safer places. And when there was someone inadaptable, spectators themselves helped to solve the problem out.
In all my more than 35 years spent in motorsport I have never been in the situation, when rally drivers and officials asked me to thank to the spectators for their skilled behavior and excellent admission. Once again, many thanks to all of you for this unique spectator’s scene. I wish all the clerks of the courses to get through this wonderful experience once.
Then I would like to thanks another group, which is not being honoured very often – it’s Police of the Czech Republic, which was intensively assisting with traffic regulation and was helping out the crews at the road sections. In term of their motto “to serve and protect” they supported all drivers, as for all expressed the overall winner Jan Kopecký in his statement. The police secured the Barum Czech Rally Zlín so that the time schedule wasn’t disturbed. And they also fulfiled “to protect” motto – during all the weekend there was reported only one autocrime. But the biggest honour went to two policemen at special stage Troják, where, after brief intervention, at least two hundreds of spectators stood up and applouded. We don’t do this usually, but this time it was really deserved.
So once again many thanks, especially to proffesional spectators. Surely we don’t want to make this wonderful sport disallowed.
I think that my acknowledgement can be finished with classical words “you can not please everyone.” Not everything was all right, we now, what and where we can improve, but without your spectators support I couldn’t live this dream with you.
Miloslav REGNER
Clerk of the Barum Czech Rally Zlín
EN
