ERC Take Five with Glenn Olsson

The inaugural BAUHAUS Royal Rally of Scandinavia was a big success so what’s being planned to make the second edition even better?
“The first year a lot of the focus was just to make the event and the sporting side work really good. But for the second year we will put even more focus on the festival and the party around it. We will have a bigger programme with all the events around the rally. Our goal from the beginning was to create a really nice rally festival, the biggest in Scandinavia. For this year we will definitely make the party much bigger.” 

After running in early July last year, the rally switches to a mid-June date this year. How significant is the change of date?
“This is the date we chose because we wanted to be in the season when companies are still working and not on holidays. We also wanted to avoid the vacation period. It’s the weekend before mid-summer in Sweden and it’s a nice period when people are starting to relax. We want to bring the fans back to Värmland again after we moved Rally Sweden up north [the country’s traditional snow fixture on the FIA World Rally Championship calendar is now run out of Umeå], and we also want to attract the Norwegian fans as well because I have good information that we will have a lot of Norwegians on the starting line.”  

What route changes are being planned?
“The basis is the same, we will use most of the stages the same but we will do some small changes to the itinerary, moving some stages from one day to another. There will be some new stages and we will have a Thursday night show with a stage as well which we didn’t have in the first year. It will be a short stage but it will be really close to the city centre, a nice opening for the event.”

Fans around the world will be hoping that Colin’s Crest is part of the route. Will it be?
“We will have the Colins stage on the itinerary and of course we really want to be there. It’s a little bit up north from Karlstad but we will try to reach it for as long as we can. It’s a beautiful place and it was the first year for us doing it in the summertime. It was really great with the good weather and everything around it, but we will really improve the numbers of people both as VIPs but also the numbers of spectators. The plan is to grow it a lot.”  

As well as the ERC stars several drivers from the past were in action as part of the Rally Legends event, which ran as part of BAUHAUS Royal Rally of Scandinavia What’s planned for 2024?
“We will try to continue with that and try to increase the volume a little bit by not just doing one stage per day but all stages in between loops. The focus is to attract the really nice cars and the really cool drivers, that’s what we want to have on the starting line.”