The organisers of Wales Rally GB, the penultimate round of the 2017 World Rally Championship season, have announced further route changes.
This is after the discovery of a tree disease in Mid-Wales, with trees infected by the fungus-like Phytophthora ramorum needing to be removed by Natural Resources Wales.
Originally, the plan was for two runs through the 31.82km Myherin stage on Friday, but this has been shortened to 18.20km.
Making up for the lost distance from the shortening of those stages, organisers have added a second run through the 13.87km Aberhirnant on Saturday morning.
This is one of the fastest stages in the entire event, which runs from the 27-29 October.
The revised schedule now totals 300.13km over 21 special stages, compared to the previous 20-stage, 306.98km total before the changes.
It follows on from Sunday’s opening pass through Gwydir being dropped last month.
“We take our environmental responsibility very seriously and work closely with NRW,” said the rally’s managing director, Ben Taylor.
“Come October, NRW will be clearing the infected trees out of Myherin, so we have to make other plans.
“Luckily, we have a route guru in Andrew Kellitt who has crunched the maps and the figures to replace the lost mileage by adding another run through Aberhirnant on Saturday morning."
“That sounds an incredibly simple solution, but believe me, it has taken about ten route iterations to get there and has had a massive knock-on effect throughout the whole event – stages have been reversed, fuel locations altered and the entire schedule reworked. But we're there now and looking forward to making this fantastic event come to life in October."
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