Rally Isle of Man could be axed from next year’s British championship, if a somewhat revealing story in yesterday’s issue of Motorsport News is to be believed.

Jack Benyon writes that the British Rally Championship for 2018 has been called into question by teams, drivers and the series’ bosses after the Manx event was ’plagued’ with problems.

The Sand Quarry (SS9) stage on Friday, involving Staarvey and Switchback, was delayed because the FIA observer was unhappy with safety in a mid-stage merge. The ’loop’ was removed so it ran to a shortened distance.

Because of the delays (around 90 minutes) and marshalling issues, the following stage, SS10, Clannagh Road (St Mark’s) was cancelled altogether.

Later that evening there were further issues at Maughold when a stop line crew deemed the location unsuitable and left their post. There was a suggestion that the officials moved the stop line to another location a few yards away, but this was not concurrent with the event’s official road book, causing yet more issues.

Crews were unhappy with the delay and lobbied the stage commander to scrap the stage (SS15) as they had spent too long waiting and were then on cold tyres.

The response from rally HQ apparently was that those who did not wish to do the stage would be convoyed out and their timecards would be taken off them (putting them out of that day of the rally with one more stage remaining). They would then be permitted to restart on Saturday for what was (for the BRC crews) the final round of the series.

Sweden’s Fredrik Ahlin had a spin in the stage, effectively costing him the British title.

He is quoted in the article as saying: ’I have absolutely nothing good to say about this rally. We sat here for 50 minutes, every driver said on safety grounds "cancel the stage".

’I didn’t push, but I’m on cold tyres. They something to learn on this island.’

Runner-up Matt Edwards was also critical: ’That was a joke [re SS15], that’s unsafe - organisers telling you to go into the stage or you lose the rally. That’s not good,’

There were also issues regarding the penultimate stage on Saturday, Marine Drive. This was initially stopped because of a herd of cows on the road near Port Soderick, but later restarted - at which point Jamie Jukes and Dave Williams crashed on the Marine Drive itself.

Miraculously, they went off the road at the one point on the coastal stretch that was relatively ’safe’ to do so, and the emergency procedures in place for such a scenario were implemented perfectly, but there was debate between the leading teams as to whether the cars that went through the stage okay should have been given notional times or not.

The argument back from the organisers was that the stage was ultimately cancelled [following the accident] so the argument was superfluous.

It is true that most of the bickering and criticism thrown at the organisers came from half a dozen of the BRC crews at the head of the field, but it was equally true that there were a lot of issues with the event.

The outcome could well be that the 2018 British Rally Championship calendar may now be redrawn without the Isle of Man being included. It would be a sad day, after so much effort has been put into regaining BRC and FIA status.

The ramifications could be significant. The event was set to announce it would re-join the full Irish Tarmac Rally Championship for next year, and that now seems in doubt.

If it is not in either BRC or ITC then it will almost certainly be dropped from the FIA Celtic Rally Trophy.

The British Rally Championship TV coverage begins this Saturday morning on Channel 4 at 7.15 and Channel 4 +1 at 8.15am.

The series will also be screened extensively on BT Sport 1 and BT Sport 2 from next Tuesday and Thursday, September 26 & 28 respectively, and Motorsport TV (UK) from Tuesday at 7.25pm.