THERE are 18 stages to race in four days, taking in a man-made track around Cardiff Bay, mountainous countryside and dense forests. The real hub of the Wales Rally GB, though, will be at City Hall. That is where Claire Parker, the organiser, will be bunkered like a military chief, following the blinking lights marking each car on giant electronic maps, ready to react to the slightest hitch.
“There will be about ten of us in the rally control room, from the radio controllers to the chief safety officer,” Parker, who is in charge of the rally for the second successive year, said. “We can see an incident the moment it happens, whether it’s a car upside down or whatever, and respond from there.”
As a former co-driver with Suzuki, Parker, 29, has plenty of hands-on experience to complement her organis- ational skills. Originally from Perth, Australia, she cut her teeth in her home country’s state championships before spending three years contesting the Age Specific Championships.
“It was serious stuff,” she said. “The money got me through university, but more importantly for my rallying career, I made lots of contacts across Asia and Europe.”
Parker steered her way into the senior management team overseeing Rally Australia four years ago and moved to Britain in 2001. “I secured a contract to race four rallies in the World Championships alongside Natalie Barratt,” she said, “and I was working with Prodrive, who run the Subaru rally team, at the same time. Through that I became a sort of liaison officer between the company that owned the media rights for the World Championships and all the professional teams.”
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Graduating to the position of sporting manager for Wales Rally GB has been a thrilling gear change, although Parker did not expect quite so many interrupted nights.
“I’ve kept a notepad by my bed for the last couple of months,” she said. “When you’re the one in charge it seems part of the job to wake up and think, ‘Oh my God, I mustn’t forget that’. I write it down and go back to sleep.”
According to Parker — who is employed by International Motor Sports, the company that promotes the rally — the most important aspect of her brief is to deliver a good route and a safe, exciting event.
The SuperSpecial stages in Cardiff Bay, where the rally will begin and end, feature head-to-head races and track entertainment. “There’s been enormous involvement from the local authority, residents and police to get it right,” she said, “but bringing the rally into the city centre opens it up to a completely new audience.”
Parker has more than 3,500 people working at the rally, many of them volunteers. “It’s a lot of people to keep happy,” she said. “It’s not surprising that our clean-up and debriefing takes a couple of weeks. We analyse everything, so that we can learn from what we did well and what we didn’t.
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“As a competitor, my most nervous time was a couple of hours before the start. As an organiser, the stress builds from about three months out.”
Parker takes it as a compliment that people want to know what she does for the rest of the year. “If an event goes smoothly,” she said, “everybody assumes it’s straight-forward to organise. But even I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. We have the first meetings for next year’s rally about one month after the current one has finished.”
She also travels to other rallies on the World Championship circuit. “There’s always something to learn,” she said.Parker misses the thrill of racing, but she has put in plenty of miles in her own car in the name of Wales Rally GB.
“I split my working week between my company office near Slough and the rally venue,” she said. “It’s a Golf GTI, so it’s perfect for the job.”