Competitor Update – 11 November 2016

November 11, 2016

Coffee Day India Rally

A reminder that entries for Coffee Day India Rally close at 5pm on Monday 14 November.
Team containers are due to be in the ABC Classic service park from Sunday 27 November.
If you have not yet obtained your Indian visa (available online) you should be doing this asap. Please contact me if you need assistance with this.
Please note that as of 9 November, 500 and 1000 rupee bank notes are no longer legal tender in India. If, like me, you have Indian currency in these denominations you will need to have them exchanged on arrival in India.
I will be in Bangalore (for import customs inspections) on Friday 25 November and will be in Chikmaglur on Saturday 26 evening.
As advised previously, there is no need for team staff to be in Bangalore for Customs. However, depending on the process, there may be a need for team staff to be present for the export inspections. I will advise as required.

Some APRC championships have already been decided following Malaysian Rally. However, the APRC Codrivers Champion, the Production Car Championship and Asia Cup Codriver will all be decided in India.
Plans are in place to have all the FIA APRC trophies for presentation following India Rally.

At the annual meeting of the APRC Working Group, held in Malaysia on 31 October, there was a change of elected members.
There are some potential changes coming as a result of the change of the management group. As these are confirmed, I will try and keep you updated.
The meeting approved some small changes to the APRC regulations which will be advised once confirmed by the FIA.
Work is still in progress for the 2017 APRC calendar, however, it will take a similar format to 2016. Once confirmed, I will advise via these updates.

I have been approached by an event messaging app provider. It is designed to work via GPRS and is not reliant on Wifi. It provides a dedicated messaging service to people involved on an event and could be useful where information needs to be relayed quickly to teams, drivers, managers, media, organisers, officials, CRO’s etc.
I have a meeting in Bangalore to discuss this further with the app builder. The plan is to trial it on event in Chikmaglur. If successful I will look at it further for 2017.
To trial the service effectively will require as many people as possible to get the app (ie those who would benefit from it and use it) – We used a wechat group in China which was reasonably successful.
Please let me know if you are interested or not. If insufficient interest, I will not pursue any further.

As always, any questions on any of the above, please contact me directly.

Murray Brown
APRC Coordinator
+63 908 310 5888
murray.brown@fiaaprc.com