Cheryl-Ann La Roche, the CEO of title sponsor First Citizens Bank, presented the R5 Rally Championship awards during the Barbados Motoring Federation’s (BMF) Night of Champions on Friday, March 17. This first-ever national awards evening for the sport was held in front of an invited audience at Mahogany Ridge, St Thomas, who gave a lengthy standing ovation to The Most Honourable Ralph ‘Bizzy’ Williams, who became the first recipient of the BMF President’s Award in recognition of his 60-year involvement in island motor sport.

After a short highlights video of action from the season, the first award went to Mark-Anthony Hinkson, Champion Driver in the E-Sports version of the R5 series, which was administered by Caribbean Sim Motorsport (CSM), the newest member of the BMF, affiliated in 2021 to help develop the growing area of digital motor sport. Mark-Anthony won eight of 11 rounds, including RallyE-Barbados, beating 37 drivers from around the region and the UK to the title.

Awards followed for the top three in the real world, each preceded by further action footage from the Championship’s inaugural season, which included drag racing, rallies, rallysprints and sprints. There were 12 points-scorers, three different event winners and year-long the competition was fought out in 10ths and 100ths of seconds.

A tie-break was necessary to settle second and third: with best results of two second places with his long-standing co-driver Graham Gittens and one of only three drivers to compete in all 15 rounds, Roger Hill collected the third place trophy. Although he didn’t join the Championship until round six, two victories including the high-scoring Rally Barbados round with co-driver Barry Ward meant the tie-break went in favour of Josh Read.

But there was a clear Champion in Stuart Maloney. With co-driver Kristian Yearwood and victory in 12 of the 15 rounds, he even recovered from losing a healthy early-season lead after failing to finish Rally Barbados. After he had accepted his own trophy, Stuart then joined Cheryl-Ann to present his chosen charity with a donation of $5,000; at the start of the season, each driver had nominated an island charity which would benefit if he became Champion . . . and Stuart’s choice was The Because of Jenna Trust, which was represented by Joanne Harrison.