Rally - Nostalgia-fest

Looking back on the R.A.C. …. There might not have been 2 million spectators out there on the Roger Albert Clark Rally last weekend but at times it felt like it. That was the usual number trotted out back in the day of three television channels and CB radios. No mobile phones, no internet and computers the size of double decker buses. And yet the numbers were huge as fans and followers looked out woolly hats, scarves, gloves and boots plus many old and faded team anoraks from days gone by. What a nostalgia-fest it turned out to be.

It might not have been an exact replica of past times but it came damn close although there was one downside. Those fans who were new to the game didn’t quite understand the basic rule which served us so well in the past. When parking, don’t block anyone else in! Narrow back roads and forestry roads are too narrow for these volumes of traffic so common sense is a necessity, and it was sadly lacking in some cases. So what’s the answer? Traffic Polis? Parking Wardens? ‘No Parking’ cones? Barrier tape?

It's something that all rally organisers will have to seriously consider in future. There are too many ‘entitled’ numpties out there who think they can just park anywhere. In all fairness it’s often because they simply don’t know any better so education would be better than enforcement, wouldn’t it?

Yes it means more manpower to publicise this info but that might be cheaper than hiring the Polis or Wardens. On-route signage might help, telling people not to park on both sides of narrow roads, or park only on one side, and these signs would have to be erected on verges on either side of the approach to stage entry or exit roads. Also put leaflets on windscreens of cars already parked to follow this advice when attending future rallies and of course more publicity in the run up to events advising people what is best practice.

It will take just one ambulance or midwife attending an emergency, and who can’t get through, to rouse public opinion against such events in future. And that would be a sad loss to the fans.

Rallying can be such cruel sport, it can also be one of the most physically and mentally rewarding sporting pursuits. It’s all about speed, skill, endurance, stamina and team work but when the end result is thwarted through mechanical failure, accident, or rally route changes or stage cancellations, the down side can be just as exhilarating - in the wrong way! No other sport can offer such extremes of emotions.

Last weekend’s R.A.C. Rally had everything from delight to despair, from high adrenalin to black moods but rally crews must be amongst the most resilient sportspeople on the planet. They have to be! Satisfaction and Results can be celebrated with a pint or a dram, whilst similarly, failure or despair can be soothed - with a pint or a dram!

And whilst crews may have their own opinions about the difficulties and challenges endured, spare a thought for the army of volunteer officials who stood out there in snow, rain, wind and cold. Their tenacity is ill rewarded even when stages are cancelled and have to be ‘taken down’ again, or delays have meant that they had to stand at their posts for hours longer than initially planned.

And what of those oft-forgotten members of all rally teams, those saviours of many an embarrassment, breakdown or unintended encounter with earthly impediments, the service crews. Those stalwarts who spring (age dependent!) into action in, around and under the car, donning ovies and oilskins, gloves and woolly hats, and wielding spanners and jemmies in a flurry of intent to do serious bodily harm. At a time when the crews are stopping for food or a rest, and the marshals and officials are packing up and heading for bed, the sound of hammers and cursing sweeps across the service area and through the night. And let’s not forget the wider circle of WAGS, family members and friends who support and feed this sporting army on the move. Some of the soups and tray bakes on offer would put an Olympic canteen to shame!

And one final point, especially in view of the longer stages. It is MS UK’s daft rule about spectators not rushing to help accident damaged or rolled cars. Because of them many crews were able to keep going and if they were in need of more professional aid/help then those spectators who are first on the scene can call them up. Their efforts should not be overlooked on any event.

Oh, and speaking of MS UK, I wonder if they’ll step in to have a word with the forestry folks about new charges due next year. Apparently rally organisers are going to have to pay a fee simply to recce possible routes for stages next year. Despite the 15 or 20 mph speed limit on forestry roads and despite the fact that the majority of these amateur volunteers will be running their own vehicles and not wanting to go any quicker than 20 mph anyway it looks as though they will have to pay a charge to enter the forests that we, the taxpayers, own.  And who will end up paying this charge?

Rallying really is an absorbing, stimulating, intoxicating and incredible sport, but it is getting awfy expensive!

Rally - Thought for the Week?

Ponder this …. while you are standing expectantly in the forests surrounded by like-minded souls. Enjoy the moment and the camaraderie, the noise and the sight of rally cars in their natural habitat, for who knows when it might end?

I just hope MS UK are aware of what is going on out there in the winter wonderness this weekend. Not just the huge entry but the numbers of fans making plans to follow it and those less intrepid fireside followers at least planning to visit their local stages. Similarly the great British media is ignorant of the following that rallying has simply because there are no turnstiles or arenas to help them do headcounts, nor are there any wayward stars whose antics might arouse the interest of the tabloids and news bulletins.

At a time when local car clubs and rally organisers are struggling to find challenging (and affordable!) stages with good roads and the various forestry organisations across the four ‘home’ countries are seeking to reduce access for motor sport whilst increasing access for every other sporting and leisure pursuit it is heartening to see what Colin Heppenstall and his team have achieved.

Given this level of interest and the ongoing struggle faced by clubs in the various national and regional championships, the sport’s governing body needs to do more to support these clubs. Someone needs to take the forest managements, the majority of which are owned by the tax paying public aside, and remind them of the Government’s ‘Sport for All’ pledges. That includes motor sport, specifically rallying.

The biggest ‘landowners’ are the various Government funded (by us the taxpayer) forestry estates across Scotland, England and Wales, followed by the National Trust, Ministry of Defence, Crown Estate and perhaps surprisingly the RSPB. Whereas the NT and Crown Estates wouldn’t be expected to look favourably upon our activities, the MoD is rather more helpful (when it can) and it is worth mentioning the RSPB in this context. Because of this organisation’s size and clout it can exert a lot of influence in the corridors of power, similarly the Nature Conservancy is a powerful lobbying group and there are others and they all have their own interests at heart. These interests do not necessarily coincide with ours, in many case quite the opposite.

This is what our own sporting governing body is up against. Every time we hear certain forests are unavailable or routes have to be changed at short notice because of nesting birds, rare animals, threatened flora, newts and butterflies, our interests drop down the list of priorities. Fair enough, but sometimes one can’t help wondering if some of these denials of motor sporting use are trotted out as excuses.

And then there are the other forest users whose groups encompass walkers, bikers, fishers, shooters and goodness knows what else and we really are the scabby cat in the corner – oops can’t say that, it would upset the RSPCA!

So enjoy this weekend and here’s a couple of early thoughts – a knighthood for Seb Perez? Sir Soundalot the ideal title? And if the Gruffalo had a rally car, it would surely be Higgy’s TR7, eh? Yup, there are plenty four pots on the road but there is little to beat the shrill crescendo of a V6 or the rasping rip of an angry V8.

Rallying. It’s not just about the sight and the smells, eh? Here’s hoping all the Scrutineers’ electronic sound meters fail!

https://fife-motor-sports-agency.square.site/

 

Rally - 1981 RAC in Dalby

Pie and a pint – but no pie! …. Just thinking back to the 1981 RAC Rally called to mind one particularly busy day and hectic schedule scuttling around Yorkshire trying to find stage finishes, get parked and then hastily interview drivers for quotes and comments before rushing off to find a phonebox and phone the tales back to the Media Centre in Rally HQ at Chester.

We finished up late one night at Langdale End village somewhere in the Dalby forest. There was no phone box but there was a pub, the Moorcock Inn, and it had a phone. So we phoned from there on the proviso that we paid for the call and bought some sustenance. Unfortunately there was no hot food, we were too late, but the landlady offered to make some sandwiches.

At least the beer was drinkable for when the sandwiches arrived the bread was stale and the cheese was mouldy. Did we complain? No chance! There was a broom propped up in the corner and a black cat sat by the open fire. Perhaps we were lucky to be too late for hot food, I hate to think what might have been stirred in the fireside cauldron – certainly not soup of the day!

I don’t know if that was the landlady herself, Mrs Martindale, who served us, but she certainly looked as though she had racked up a few thousand miles in her time – without the use of an aeroplane.

As for Langdale End, it is well named, although I think the actual name was shortened from – Langdale End of the World!

One other thing, we were ready for a pee when we left so we asked about the facilities. We didn’t bother – there were plenty of trees out there any way!

Thus ‘fortified’ it was back to the hive of activity that was Rally HQ to check in and give the wee Ford Escort 1300 a chance to cool down. We left it ticking away in the car park and I’m sure I heard a sigh as went into the hotel.

 

Rally - Lombard RAC Rally

 Chester 1981 .... when we were boys – and girls!

 

Rally - RAC back in the day

Excitement rising …. Next weekend will generate many memories for the older rally fans while creating new memories for younger generations. And whilst there will be many similarities between the forthcoming Roger Albert Clark evocation of well remembered Lombard RAC Rallies, there will be many differences too. Primarily in the areas of results and communications.

Back when the only mobile phones were seen in episodes of Dr Who, getting results back from the 65 Special Stages which were scattered across three countries, was a mammoth task. It was the same for on-event information. For those journalists who preferred to sit in the centrally heated, coffee machine decorated Media Centre at Rally HQ in Chester there had to be provided a steady stream of ongoing results and information from the crews. But how to feed this supine audience?

It all started well before the rally with route plotting and recce-ing. Not the usual kind of recce but plotting stage starts, finishes, service areas and telephone boxes – those upright red things that punctuated the countryside. Space at these locations had also to be recce’d to accommodate the mobile results and information crews’ cars. These crews relaying times from the stage finishes while ‘quotes’ were hopefully gleaned from drivers, co-drivers, service crews, team managers and PR personnel. Then it was a rush to get to the nearest phone box first. Results always had priority – unless the Info crews got there first!

There were no internet downloads, no emails or WhatsApps. Even telex and fax machines were little use in the great outdoors far from wall mounted power sockets. Radios were primarily for the rescue services. In other words, ALL information was relayed by voice telephone back to Rally HQ.

There was a big staff back in Chester too where the computers and the printers for the Rally Officials, results and media teams had previously arrived in a large truck and taken over the hotel function room – not a laptop in sight!

The results team therefore had to feed the computers manually while the industrial sized printers churned out their own paper trail just as the Media staff had to write down and then type all the information that had been telephoned in from the field. Bulletins were produced and interim positions with stage times were printed out in their thousands for distribution not just to the in-hotel media reps but to the newspapers in Fleet Street and of course TV and radio stations. Back then the RAC was a BIG thing!

So whilst that was all being done in the background what of the poor bedraggled, soaked and frozen spectators out there in the dark and the cold? Standing there under the trees with icy fingers running down their backs from the drips off the winter foliage. No phones and only a pocket radio for updates – if they could get a signal.

This was where Brian and Liz Patterson ruled the roads. They too had a team out there producing on-event bulletins. In the back of the Volvo estate car was a duplicator (drum printer), generator and stacks of paper! They ran ahead of the rally so that Brian could grab a quick word with the leading drivers, speak to the results crew and media crews, before dictating his notes to Liz who typed them up on stencils while Brian fired up the generator to power the printer. On standby were small teams of volunteers whose then task was to grab a sheaf of these one page bulletins and disappear off into the night to distribute them at stage starts, finishes and in service areas as well as any known spectator spots. Meanwhile, Brian was back in the driving seat of the Volvo hurtling towards his next rendezvous and woe betide anyone who got in the way of that flying Swedish tin box. That was how the word was spread back in the day.

None of this standing in a forest and dialling up your smart phone to check rolling results, read what’s currently happening to whom and where and perhaps even watch some of the action on your small screen. Crazy, eh?

But will it be as much fun? Standing there in the rain, the fog or the dark and suddenly a hand thrusts a sheet of paper at you with Brian’s latest updates which then had to be relayed verbally and loudly to all your pals and other spectators standing around. This was just one of the many on-event excitements that created rallying’s unique atmosphere.

We may have lost that human touch these days, but the spectacle next weekend will more than compensate with the added instant availability of results and news. Not the same, but better? You decide.

Photos show Liz in the Volvo typing up Brian’s notes on to a stencil, then loading the duplicator – while Brian stands there supervising with his hands in his pockets! There’s also a couple of Bulletin crews hovering in the background waiting for the first batch to be printed off. The final pic shows one of the Results crew cars having claimed a phone box! Ford supplied the Results and Info crews with Escort 1300s. Them were’t days, eh?

Rally - Looking Back to the RAC

It’s amazing what you find when you’re not really looking for it. This is the Ford Motor Company on-event Media Pack from the 2002 Network Q RAC Rally. It was full of pre-event info on the teams, drivers, codrivers, the cars and the route with the added Rally booklets called ‘Media Guides’.

These contained additional on-event information gleaned from crews and teams during the rally and then compiled back at Rally HQ for distribution to those journalists and media experts who didn’t want to venture out into the November cold and wet!

Instead, teams of journalists, aspiring journalists and PR crews were dispatched to Stage Finish Controls and Service Areas to interrogate drivers, co-drivers, service crews and any other team personnel. The quotes obtained were then sent back to Rally HQ for the Media Office to compile into these Media Guide booklets for issuing to the Press. 

These info gathering teams and personnel had been pre-arranged prior to the rally by the Media Officer and were supplied with telephone cards or bags of coins so that reports could be phoned back in to HQ – mobile phones were still in their infancy in those far off simpler days!

Indeed many newspaper and magazine reports were compiled back then by ‘reporters and journalists’ whose fingers remained un-frostbitten and feet which stayed cosy and dry, and whose free hand-out woolly hats never felt a snow flake on their bobble. Possibly the only rally car they saw was the one on the Finish line with champagne dripping off it!

And so it was left to the eedjits and dafties who braved and endured the elements all in search of stories and info against an impossible timetable who supplied the ‘real’ journalistic fodder back in HQ! Aye, them were’t days, but what a rush!

 

 

Rally - Dave Weston Jnr

Shock news this morning …. Scottish rallying has lost another good pal. Dave Weston Junior aged just 35 years passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday. Having survived pancreatitis last year he was resuming almost normal life. He was actually back at work when he collapsed, so this has come as a terrible shock to the family.

Dave Junior will be well known to Scottish and British rally folks, especially the Scottish Championship and BTRDA series regulars. He started rallying in a Ford Fiesta ST in 2007, won his first rally in 2009, the Malton Forest Rally in a Subaru, and stopped rallying in 2016 after winning his ‘home’ event, the Coltel Grampian Stages Rally.

The family have requested privacy at this time as they try to come to terms with this tragic news.

( Further information will follow in due course )