Northern Road Rally Championship

BULLETIN NO. 3, APRIL 2003

Some good news and some bad news in this bulletin. Firstly, one major item of bad news is that Alexander Forbes, the MSA’s brokers, have rather suddenly withdrawn from covering road and stage events. There has been no official MSA statement on the issue yet, but it appears that the underwriters were not happy with the way the policy operated with regard to the road traffic act. The upshot is that certain events have been left high and dry without insurance for competitors and not able to arrange any. I delayed sending this bulletin out, as at one stage this weekend’s Witch Way was likely to be a victim, but thanks to lots of hard work from the organizers the event is running (this is the good news!). Hopefully the MSA’s previous brokers, Marsh (formerly Bowring) will be stepping in for any future events, which will mean those drivers without a valid ‘NES’ letter or its modern equivalent, will need to apply for one if they wish to use ‘on event’ insurance. The other option is to get in touch with CCI (who are covering the Witch Way) to arrange yourself an annual policy that covers road rallies, as some drivers already do. Their details are in the blue book if you want to follow this route.

The second bit of bad news is the postponement of Selby’s Three Swans. Various factors have contributed to this, which I won’t trouble you with here. Suffice to say, they still want to put the event on and the provisional date will be 23^rd / 24^th August. Not ideal, I know, as some people will no doubt be on holiday, but at least it is two weeks from the events either side of it. So we now have a rather glaring gap in the calendar until the Westmorland in July, which I can confirm is running and will be on the date published. I spoke to new Clerk of Course Tom Wilcox recently and he informs me that the format of the event will be much the same, the route just heading a little further South. This is good news as this has always been a popular event in the past, so hopefully plenty of you will be venturing up to have a go. All being well the insurance situation will be resolved by then too.

So an empty calendar in June and early July provides an opportunity for another forum, the one held last year seemed very popular and it was suggested that it should be an annual event, so I will sort out a date and a venue and let you know in the next bulletin. Hopefully there will be plenty of ‘other’ motor sport on, I hope to go up to the Scottish Borders for the Jim Clark Rally on 4^th – 6^th July, which I can thoroughly recommend if you want to watch some cracking tarmac rallying without having to stay up all night.

Anyway, here’s what happened on round 4….

12TH / 13TH APRIL – ROUND 4, VK DERBYSHIRE RALLY, MATLOCK MC

With the addition of a few ANWCC contenders this year, Matlock saw a full entry on their event for the first time in few years. Traditionally a tough event, this has not always been a popular one for ANCC crews. There are always a lot of East Midland crews who know their way around map 119 and have cars that are fettled to survive the event, so in my opinion a top ten finish for a ‘foreign’ crew is a good one – I remember my first two attempts at the event, we were happy to finish at all! All told we had 16 crews and seven ‘halves’ entered with numerous others out marshalling. I don’t think anyone was under any illusions about the nature of the event, even Jon Lawson had bolted a sumpguard onto the Legacy specially. However with no rain to speak of for a month or so, some of the whites were absolutely rock hard, so all the cars would get a good shake down!

The two halves of the event would have contrasting formats, the first designed to test the driver with the route handed out at the start and seven sections timed to the second. After petrol all timing was to the minute and the navigator had to work hard with a selection of plot n’ bash handouts to tackle. From the start at Chesterfield the route stuck to the Eastern side of the map and actually didn’t use many white roads. One of the few it did use though, Dryhurst Farm, was the un-doing of Jon & Chris at car 5, the aforementioned new sumpguard parting company, fortunately without other damage, but they sensibly chose to retire and do a bit of spectating. Joining them on the retirements list before petrol were a number of our contenders: Bill Chadwick & Alan Edwards, running at car 6 having been second reserve, I am pleased to say both emerged unhurt after rolling the Celica; Dave Jones’ new 106 parted company with most of its oil; Sandie & Paul Taylor had an electrical fire which ended their night very early on and Peter Reeson had an ‘off’ and also escaped unhurt.

In contrast to the compact first half, after petrol at Wirksworth we ventured all the way over to the Western edge and back again, taking in some very fast roads as well as whites at Bonsall, Elton Farm, Hartington and Monyash. The first of these, immediately after petrol, would be cancelled when most of the field were held up by a collapsed wall. Indirectly it also forced the retirement of Bob Marshall & Roger Hage, the Corsa overheating as they removed the offending wall from their path. They had been lying third at the time. Other second half retirements would be John Haden, with a holed fuel tank and Terry Martin & Simon Bentley, who went OTL trying to repair a very inaccessible split hose.

The timing may have only been to the minute but there were still some tight sections, most crews dropping time at five controls. Fastest crew in the second half were Mark Whitford & Steve Porter, getting to grips with the newly built escort, but also happy to still be in the rally after an engine transplant on the Saturday afternoon! In the end they were to finish in third place, just seven seconds behind Steve Webster & Lee Burgess. Retirement of the crews lying second and third at petrol eased the pressure a little on half way leaders, Carl Hawkins & Iain Tullie, however their main concern was getting to the finish as they had lost use of  2^nd and 4^th gears before petrol. The remaining gears held out to give them a repeat of last year’s win, by just under two minutes.

Richard Hage and Mick Fern both navigated their non-ANCC drivers into the top ten, while next ‘full crew’ up after Mark & Steve were Dan Robinson & Ian Gibbins, following up their 2^nd overall on the Ryemoor with an excellent result on their first attempt at this event. Some of our Beverley contenders were out marshalling, Andy Beaumont and Mike Petch moving up to 3^rd in the tables as a result. Also marshalling but retaining their positions were Dave Chapman and David Taylor. Also scoring good points as class winners were Stew Dale & James Savage in 12^th.

One third of the way through the season and it is good to see some new names near the top of the leagues, but it is early days yet and I am sure once he has fully recovered from his recent operation, Gav Smith will be back out to defend his title.

So a bit of a break in events, as mentioned before, but hopefully in the next bulletin there will be some details of the forum, plus of course a full report on the Witch Way.

 Iain