PETER Clarke, president of Jamaica Millennium Motoring Club (JMMC), said a new overarching body has been created to take motorsports to the next level.

He made the announcement at the JMMC Awards ceremony at The Knutsford Court Hotel in St Andrew last Friday.

“We have registered the Jamaica Motoring Federation (JMF) and have advised the Government, Sports Development Fund, and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA),” Clarke told Auto.

The JMF will operate much like other local federations, such as the Jamaica Football Federation, providing the regulatory and administrative framework for the sport. Significantly, the JMF will be able to access funding from the SDF on behalf of its members.

For Clarke, this has been the thrust of his presidency.

“The aim is to allow for equity across all the genres of motorsports,” he said.

The new body will be made up of two representatives from the various motorsport clubs, once they meet the basic requirements. As for the JMMC, it will remain in a skeletal form for the next three years, to monitor the progress of the JMF, at which point the decision to permanently phase it out will be made.

The event celebrated the success of the team of Daryl King and Rameses McGregor. King took home the vaunted 2013 Rallysport title, while McGregor came second in the stages rally co-driver’s chase. Together they took home the second-place stages rally team championship trophy behind Joel Jackson and Dmitri Dawkins.

“My plans for 2014 are to encourage some younger people into the sport,” said King, who admitted he’s started sharing the Honda Civic with several of his younger family members at the most recent event.

“We’ve become the standard and thus the target for the rest of the drivers,” said McGregor.

For Jackson, it’s been a tough season, which involved almost losing the car twice to fire. He’s expecting a tougher 2014 as more competition will be joining his class, but he has his eyes set on the Rallysport title he narrowly missed.

“We lost out last year because we took the car to Trinidad, so we won’t be going this year as I want Daryl’s trophy,” Jackson said.