We know who did well on the Beatson’s
Building Supplies Mull Targa Rally, but we don’t actually know who has won -
yet. Although all the test results have been posted on the ‘scotresults’
website, the penalties have yet to be applied. That’s because they were marked
on the Marshals’ Check Sheets and these have to be deciphered and fed into the
machine on their return.
That machine happens to be in Glenrothes, because due to the
wonders of modern electronic trickery, Results HQ is in Glenrothes (on the east
coast of the mainland) where Raymond is poised over keyboard to feed in the
times from this end, and spew out the computations from his end back to here.
Still it marks a considerable improvement over the use of carrier pigeons.
Amongst those who have done well are Andy Beaumont and Andrew
Fish in the Sunbeam Rapier H120. If you think Historic cars are boring, nobody
has told Andy. Scandinavian flicks and tail slides in a car which should be a
classic museum piece.
On test times he was leading the 1.2 litre Renault Clio of
Garry Pearson and Richard Crozier by 39 seconds. Just 30 seconds behind Garry
were Craig Wallace and Clifford Auld in the Toyota Corolla with the Vauxhall
Viva of David Ruddock and Dave Boyes only 6 seconds behind them.
But as I say, this is entirely theoretical at present as we
await final scores. And you know what, it might be tomorrow before Final Results
are declared. However, no-one seems too bothered, they all had a grand day out,
even those who didn’t finish. The weather stayed mostly dry and there was a
sprinkling of spectators at some of the tests including a few folk who fancied
a wee shot themselves when they saw it was for standard cars and the tests were
fairly short.
Ian Dixon was going well in his MGB till the clutch
exploded, Keith Robathan’s banger BMW was suffering severial brake fade at
times and the family Fleming were all out with punctures. Grant Fleming had a
double puncture in his Fiesta and daughter Chloe suffered a double puncture too
in her Citroen DS3. AS for Peter Marshall he had invested in a large packet of
Araldite: “The spark plug out of the cylinder head on the start line of the
first stage,” he said, “it stripped the thread so we’ve stuck a new spark plug
in the hole and securing it with Araldite.” I’ll tell you later if they
finished.
