DEF LEPPARD Guitarist VIVIAN CAMPBELL's Rally Car To Go On Display At 2025 Performance Racing Industry Show

DEF LEPPARD guitarist Vivian Campbell, who has a passion for rally racing and competes in the American Rally Association (ARA),will bring his rally car to the 2025 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) Show, the motorsports industry’s premier trade event, on December 11-13 in downtown Indianapolis, where you can see it on display in the Green Lobby of the Indiana Convention Center (ICC) in Aisle 7100 in between Hammertown and the PAC Lounge. In addition, he will be interviewed live at the PRI Paddock, located in the Yellow Hall at the Capitol Avenue entrance of the ICC, on Saturday, December 13, at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Regarding how he got involved in rally racing, Vivian told PerformanceRacing.com: "I got into rally after I moved to New Hampshire from Los Angeles in the summer of 2019. Normally, I'm touring every summer with DEF LEPPARD. In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, all of a sudden we weren't going anywhere."

Last June, Campbell discussed his interest in rally racing during an appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". He said at the time:  "I [got into rally racing], actually, when COVID happened. That's when I got into doing rally [racing]. Plus I moved to New Hampshire, and there's a great rally school, Team O'Neill, is just two or three hours up the road from me here in New Hampshire. And so I went to a rally school December of 2020, and I went back in January of '21, February through March, April. And then they eventually said, 'Look, you should just go do a rally.' So I started doing rallies. I think I've done eight nationals and a couple of regionals, and I've had two rollover crashes already. So that was a learning curve. And about two and a half years ago was the last rally I did. And about three years ago I commissioned a purpose-built rally car. So it just arrived at the weekend, and I was up with Team O'Neill getting a refresher course and getting some tuition and testing the car. So I'm gonna do an event in September, in Tennessee, the Overmountain Rally; it's one of the nationals. So that'll be my first national rally since the end of 22."

Elaborating on what rally racing entails, Vivian said: "It's [driving] mostly on logging roads, gravel roads through the forest. And they have different stages. A national is usually over two days, about 14 or 15 stages. And you transit on public roads in between the stages. And it's the most fun you can have in a car, let me put it that way. And you drive with a co-driver. In advance of the rally itself, you take pace notes. You do reconnaissance, and you take pace notes and you drive to the notes, basically, which is a bit of a science. So it's pretty involved."

Campbell added: "I've always been a rally fan, ever since I was a kid in Donegal, up in Ireland. Every summer they had the Donegal Rally, and I remember being a young kid and watching that and getting very excited about it. So it's always been my favorite form of motor sport and it's always been something that I wanted to try. And then the combination of moving to New Hampshire, plus COVID happening and having all the free time in my hands gave me the opportunity to get into it. And I'm very passionate about it now."

When host Eddie Trunk told Campbell to be careful and not get hurt after finally beating cancer, Vivian said: "It is so safe. I mean, you could get hurt crossing the street to go to Starbucks. Anything could happen. Obviously, the safety levels that are built into these cars are extreme. Like I said, I've had a couple of rollover crashes. My second one totaled a car, and my co-driver and I got out literally without a scratch. So there's a lot of safety engineered in these vehicles. And the fact that I've had a couple of rollover crashes means I'm not gonna have more. I've done that, I've checked that box. Experience is a great teacher. I do not want to do that again, especially in my new rally car that's been three years in the building."

This past June, Vivian said that he was "completely in remission for the first time" after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Campbell — who before joining DEF LEPPARD in 1992 was well known for his work with DIO and WHITESNAKE — went public with his Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis in June 2013.

Vivian underwent three separate spells of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, only for his Hodgkin's lymphoma to return.

Six years ago, Campbell underwent spine surgery.

Vivian and his DEF LEPPARD bandmates were finally inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March 2019 — 14 years after the British rockers first became eligible.

Image credit: Team O'Neil