About

The seeds of iRally.com were sewn back in February 1998 under the guise of the ‘Rally Information Service’ by a 16-year-old Bangor (Co. Down, Northern Ireland) teenager.

While providing news and results from Irish, British and World Championship events, the original Rally Information Service was also one of the first websites in the world to host video clips from stage rallies.

The World Wide Web was a very different place back then. It was seven years before the eventual launch of YouTube, which changed the ease in which everyone could upload and share videos across the world.

Back in 1998, this teenager was armed with a camcorder and an unlikely piece of software called VisualMail. The software was designed to record personal video messages and email them to friends and family across the world…but the young lad found another use. He used it to share his rally video clips, which he made available through his website as downloadable executable (.exe) files.

As the popularity of the Rally Information Service grew, eventually it left AOL’s free servers where it was first hosted and started to run under its own steam. The website was relaunched around 2002 with a new design under the www.ral.ly domain. Essentially, it was five different sites under one roof, with separate sections for World, British, Irish and Northern Ireland rallying.

That same year, RallyForums.com was also launched, a site which continues to be popular amongst many rally fans today. However, it was only in 2012 that iRally.com was finally brought to life, despite first being registered in 2005. And now it has become the latest incarnation of the original Rally Information Service, now under the guise of iRally.com.

The aim of iRally.com is to bring some of the latest news from the rally world direct to your desktop, with a healthy helping of results, photos, videos and special features too. Make sure you add the site to your bookmarks and check back daily for the latest rally news!