A quick update on what’s going on in relation to TV etc for this season.

Our prospective Sponsor, Ashton Consulting, has been speaking to JR about putting a TV package together to raise the profile of the series and hopefully to enable the drivers to encourage potential sponsors to part with some money in these hard times.

As it stands at present we are about to sign off on a deal to cover the whole season in the following format.

Our own dedicated one hour show.

This will be 7, hour long programmes on Men and Motors through the season. (Possibly 8). the reason we have gone with M&M is because I was keen for us to have our own standalone programme with the title clearly visible, rather then us just being part of a program and not knowing when our coverage would be shown, although we will be on this as well.

The content for this will also be used on dedicated "Race and Rally UK" Programmes which are shown on Motors TV as well as Five (terrestrial)

The programmes will be mainly focused on racing, however in the interests of having little segments focusing on the teams "behind the scenes" the producers have agreed to run some "video diary" based footage for any teams who wish to make the effort to supply it.

We will also be utilising on board camera footage. JR is in the process of finalising a bulk deal for those that wish to buy their own two camera systems and we will have more news about that later. Otherwise the TV Company will hire cameras to those that wish to use them and the footage on the programmes.

At this stage we are still looking for an additional Sponsor to carry some of the cost, otherwise Ashton Consulting will fund a slimmed down version of the above probably based around 4 programmes, but again on the same channels.

Either way - its looking good and should be worth Drivers using this information to attract further sponsorship, which at the end of the day is the main reason for doing it, as well as potentially attracting more people to the series. It really sticks us all up into a different league and potentially gives the Series the profile to move onto bigger meets for next year (2010) as well.

This deal is not final yet, but is looking likely.

More News to follow in due course.

Owen O’Neill Ashton Consulting Bristol