Northern Road Rally Championship

BULLETIN NO. 8, OCTOBER 2003

Ten rounds gone and three to go, but unfortunately the championship is down to twelve rounds: as stated in the last bulletin, the Moorlands & Meadows back in February has been declared null and void and I have now received official confirmation of this, so all scores, including marshalling points, have been cancelled for round 2. After consultation with the Championship Stewards, I can also confirm that the championship scores will be based on each competitor’s best eight scores from the twelve remaining rounds, as per the Championship Regulations. There had also been some discussion at recent events about refund of entry for those who competed on the M & M; I put this question to Ian Davis (important MSA chap) at our recent delegates meeting and he said that Mid Derbyshire were not obliged to refund any entry fees. So I think we can consider the matter closed and let the £3,500 fine imposed be a warning to any organizing club in future that thinks it can disregard the Blue Book when running events.

Moving onto more positive things, here’s what happened on the last round…

4^TH/5^TH OCTOBER – ROUND 10 - DANUM RALLY, LINDHOLME MSC

Clerks of Course David Wilson and Ian Beech had been struggling to find a date to run Lindholme’s event, postponed from May, so when De Lacy’s Seven Dales was cancelled they snapped up the date, taking the event back close to what used to be its ‘traditional’ date. With only twelve weeks in which to put the event on, they set themselves a challenging task, but I am pleased to say it proved a success, attracting 29 crews and giving them some challenging navigation and an interesting route on map 112.

The route started with some tricky tulips, using a combination of white and yellow roads South of Swinefleet, before heading generally Southwards, keeping to the West of the River Trent. A good few crews were still ‘clean’ on time until the regularity section at Sandtoft, which took in a bit of old airfield and a handful of codeboards. Graham Reeson and Roger Hage were quickest around here on one minute exactly, just ahead of John & David Dimbleby on 1:05. Unfortunately the latter were to have deja-vu from 2002 as incorrectly recorded codeboards, three on this occasion, would drop them to an eventual 9^th overall.

Heading Eastwards through Gainsborough, a tight standard section using a white at Sturgate took time out of a number of crews, before the second regularity, this time around Hemswell Cliff, before petrol at Cainby Corner on the A15. The penalties were much closer on this section, with many crews around the two minute mark, however it was the code boards that caused a few problems. The organizers had sensibly decided to reduce the penalty on the two regularity sections to only 15 seconds per board compared to the 5 minutes on the standard sections, the intention being to discourage crews from going back if they missed one. Unfortunately some crews actually got lost around Hemswell, so there were cars all over the place, picking up boards out of order. To make matters worse, a number of cars suffered punctures having cut across what appeared to be a harmless old bonfire, which turned out to be covered with old nails… Andy Beaumont & Mike Petch thought their night was over when they arrived at petrol with no less than three punctures, some borrowed tyre mousse miraculously enabled them to complete the remaining third of the event to finish an improbable fifth overall.

The sections after petrol headed North, either side of the A15, with a variety of navigation to slow crews down on the fast roads. A tight section around Cleatham Hall took a minute out of all but three crews, before the ‘sting in the tail’, three short, back to back standard sections with lots of not as map code boards, through Laughton Woods. Five crews successfully negotiated this loop without further penalty and it proved decisive as four of these were to take the first four places overall. The Ferry House at East Stockwith provided a good finish venue, but a few crews departed after breakfast unhappy, feeling they had been harshly penalized for recording codeboards in the wrong places on the timecards. The organizers had warned crews about this at the start and every codeboard even indicated which RC number is was, so were justified in penalizing people – it is worth noting they were more lenient than last year, as the penalty was reduced from a fail to just five minutes this time.

Following his recent success guiding John Haden to victory on the Mercian last month, Roger Hage, this time alongside Graham Reeson, looked on course for back to back wins with a 30 second lead at petrol, however a ‘howler’ of a last card saw them pick up sixteen minutes at various controls, eventually finishing eighth. This left John Haden & Iain Tullie to repeat their 2002 victory, ahead of Nik Kershaw & Paul Nelson. The rest of the top ten was pretty much an ANCC clean sweep, with most of the leading championship contenders taking a good points haul. Special mention must go to Dave & John Tubman, finishing a most impressive fourth overall having started at car 17 in their 205. Most notable omissions from the results were Jon Lawson & Chris Pringle at car 2. They were in fact out marshalling on the event, having tried in vain to beg, steal or borrow a vehicle in which to compete, with the Legacy still off the road. They got some marshalling points, but it was tough for Jon to have to watch a good performance from the Holdsworths propel Malcolm back to the top of the drivers’ table.

Many thanks to Lindholme and all the marshals for making the event possible, congratulations for putting on a good one on a very short time scale. On a personal note my thanks to John for chauffeuring me around once again, but especially on this occasion for rescuing me when I, rather embarrassingly, ran out of fuel on the way home….so that’s what that yellow light next to the fuel gauge means….!!

The navigators title has now been decided, in rather unexciting fashion, but the drivers championship more than makes up for this – mathematically, ten people can still win, but more realistically, take your pick from any of the current top seven. Mr. Lawson could take the lead with a good finish on the Cossack, not beyond him despite the amount of white mileage being more suited to the prepared cars of the East Midlands crews. Andy Beaumont will be out topping up his marshalling score, while Dave Chapman and Danny Robinson will both be hoping to post their eighth scores before they start to drop scores. Stan Featherstone and four times champ Carl Hawkins are the outside bets, needing high scores on all the remaining rounds and hoping that those ahead don’t improve their totals by much. The battle for the remaining overall awards in the navigators is actually even more open, anyone down to Paul Taylor in 17^th could end up second, never mind top 5.

Something I haven’t publicized a lot this year is the new Club Championship, the table for which is below. Those of you who have read your regs will know how it works, but briefly, points are awarded from 10 down to 1 based on the totals of all the drivers, navigators and marshals points on each event for each club represented added together. Beverley look likely winners, but Hadrian are giving them a real run for their money. I expected more of a challenge from Eastwood but they have not had so many crews out so far this year, with the Cossack next and Roger now back out competing I am sure they will be moving up the table!

That’s it for now, see you all in Grantham.                           Iain