The organisers of this year’s Vodafone Rally de Portugal have praised and thanked the legion of passionate Portuguese rally fans for their help in making the event’s return to the north of the country a roaring success.
This year’s rally was based at the Exponor centre in Matosinhos on the outskirts of Oporto in the north of the country. This is where the rally was based until the early 2000s and is the spiritual home of the event, allowing some of the rally’s most iconic stages to return to the FIA World Rally Championship for the first time in 14 years.
In the interim period, the event was based in the south of Portugal in the Algarve region but with the return to the north, a huge increase in the number of spectators was expected, since the northern Portuguese rally fans are legendary for their passion and dedication to the sport.
The organisers of the event knew that using stages such as Ponte de Lima and the world-famous Fafe would bring spectators out in their thousands and so, they appealed directly to the fans to help them run a event which would be both safe and successful.
Almost 2000 police and GNR officers were drafted into the area to help manage the traffic situation while 500 marshals were in the stages to ensure that the spectators remained in the specially-allocated safe viewing areas.
Members of the organising team appeared on TV for months ahead of the rally, as did WRC drivers in specially-commissioned promotional slots. Press conferences, advertising and social media campaigns were all undertaken to ensure that spectators understood the importance of safety on not only this year’s rally but also, the future of the rally in the north.
The result was an exceptional success, with an estimated two million spectators viewing the event over the course of the rally.
Commenting, Mario Martins da Silva, Chairman of the Organising Committee, said; “We think this year things went better than we anticipated. There are areas for us to improve on, of course, but it went very well. We put a lot of effort into explaining how important security is, so that the event remains in the north and in the WRC.
“The public understood this and I heard people discussing that they need to behave, so the message go out. The idea was to get the fans to come to watch the rally but in the right place so we could keep the rally safe.
“I want to thank the fans as well as the police, local authorities and all the rally staff for their efforts to make this year’s rally such a success.”