The lessons the world can learn from Rally Series

Rallying has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was six years old when my father put a camera in my hands and told me where to stand. My first picture was of works Seat driver Erwin Weber.

Both of my parents worked professionally in motorsport photography, so I grew up in this natural environment. And I’m from Portugal, rallying is a huge passion for us in this country. When I turned 18, I enrolled at university… but never went.

Instead, I started my own company.

My journey around the world had begun. My first client was Nasser Al-Attiyah. I owe Nasser and drivers like Eyvind Brynildsen and Khalid Al Qassimi so much, they believed in me and they contributed so much to my professional growth.

Today, beyond photography, I lead a motorsport-focused marketing, communication, design and video company, with more than 10 professionals working daily at events for promoters, organizers, teams and official drivers.

But rallying is still at the heart of what I do. I genuinely believe ours is the greatest sport in the world. There is no other discipline that combines performance, risk, human emotion, nature and authenticity in such an intense way. And once someone truly experiences a rally — especially live — it’s very hard to walk away.

You’re hooked. For life.

While photography was where I started, my dream was always about promotion. If I’d made it to university, I was going to study marketing. Now, these aspects of my world have collided with Rally Series.

One of the biggest challenge rallying faces today is attracting new audiences. The sport has everything it needs to grow; it simply needs to be more open, better explained and experienced in a different way — more fan-friendly.

Rallying needs to evolve in its format without losing its essence and competitiveness. Rally Series is not a fight against tradition — it’s an evolution. I’m here to help, because I truly love this sport. I often say my job is a hobby. Why? Because for me it doesn’t feel like work; it’s what I genuinely love doing. I leave my comfort zone many times, but I’m never unhappy, and I never quit. I know this is the right path, otherwise I would never have taken this risk.

It’s like the era of the Nokia 3310 and the arrival of the iPhone — a natural evolution that happens in everything.

We live in a decade where drivers, brands and fans are looking for visibility, emotional connection and storytelling. It’s no longer just about pure competition. That’s reality. New drivers want to show who they are, they want to be seen, to interact and not just race against the stopwatch in isolation. For that, they need time, stronger communication teams, and the ability to finish the day with space for all this work.

The problem is not competition. The problem is that traditional formats often remove time and space for drivers to show their personality. I strongly believe the future lies in balance:real competitive rallying and controlled moments of spectacle.

This has been the inspiration for Rally Series – it’s something I was thinking about for so long.

In 2023, with the entire concept already built before launching it officially in 2025, I organized a fully regulated rally, following all official rules, in a beautiful location. I created an arena, promoted the event, organized it with professional colleagues from an organizing club who are still with me today. I drove a Citroën C3 Rally2 and I won the rally after a healthy battle with two well-known top drivers.

It was in this moment that I realized having an arena [stage] driven four times was not enough, so I evolved the concept into the arena plus traditional special stages. This is what formed the foundation of last year’s inaugural Rally Series. We take the fan-friendly arenas, where we offer the perfect place for families to experience and enjoy our sport – a lot of the time for the first time ever in their lives. It’s a fantastic day out and an amazing way for people to see what rallying means. As well as all the activations, we have a stage running through the arena, so they see the cars in action.

Like I said, I knew that wouldn’t be enough. So we also have traditional stages to make the competition more meaningful – but the cars are always coming back to the arena, to put the fans at the heart of the event. These are not circuit rallies, Rally Series is about enhancing traditional events.

Rally Series was created from scratch, over several years of sketches and concepts, as a true puzzle of ideas collected throughout my international career. Every detail was thought through: sporting format, arenas, communication, content, fan experience, logistics and image. And one very important thing — I love driving, and I was never able to create a complete project around that. With Rally Series, it’s easier to create real opportunities for drivers who deserve them.

It required an enormous amount of work from me and from a highly dedicated promoter team. Nothing existed before the first event. Everything was built from zero — even in communication, it went from zero to 100. All the ideas we always wanted to implement, but were often stopped from doing, we adopted in the first year and will expand even further in the second, including creative content, different and fan-oriented livestreams, and much more.

That’s exactly why it worked. No bad habits. No legacy constraints.

Last year’s first season – which included five rounds in Portugal – exceeded expectations by a long way. The impact was really significant: strong public attendance, high digital engagement, extremely positive feedback from drivers and teams, and growing interest from sponsors day after day. It delivers real, direct return. But the most important achievement, like I mentioned, was bringing in those new fans, families, young people, people who had never attended a rally before. For me, that’s the greatest success, thanks to the comfort, accessibility and atmosphere created by the arena and the fan zone.

So many times last year, I had this moment where I actually thought: ‘This is happening, we’re really doing this!’

Now we don’t stop. 2026 will be a year of consolidation and growth. We will elevate content production and strengthen partnerships. We’re also entering a new phase with Castrol as annual title sponsor, giving the project a clear identity and stability, alongside the involvement of several new brands to be announced soon. At the same time, Rally Series is being structured as an international franchised model. Legal and contractual work is already underway.

Longer-term, the aim is to help grow rallying globally, to help the sport evolve without losing its identity. Everything is planned; the puzzle is assembled. What we need now is opportunity.

This is not a hobby. This is my life.