What a coincidence …. It’s just a great pity that there is no website or publication offering full rally reports from events around Scotland these days. Instead hours are spent chasing up individual social media postings trying to piece together what happened, and even then, the full story cannot be found. If it wasn’t for Raymond Mann’s excellent Scotresults service we wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on at the non-spectator Autosave Components Kinloss Spring Rally in the far north at the weekend.
But it was odd that Kinloss was underway at the same time as I was working through one of my 2004 notebooks and came across some notes from another airfield based event less than 15 miles away from Kinloss which took place exactly 21 years ago. The venue was the old Milltown airfield to the north east of Elgin.
Anyway the weekend’s results revealed that John Rintoul had won with a winning time of 77 mins 29 secs for the six stage event, whereas 21 years ago, he finished second to Tom Morris in his MG Metro 6R4.
Tom’s winning time for that rally was 1 hour 57 mins 7 secs for this eight stage event – and you thought Kinloss offered maximum bang for yer buck!
John’s troublesome Ford Escort Cosworth was over two minutes back in second place and more than two minutes up on third placed Robert Sutherland in the Opel Manta.
It was also interesting to note that Allan MacKay was eighth overall in the Anglia WRC and John Marshall was tenth in a Group N Subaru, although he might well have finished in the top four but for a ten minute timing penalty at the end of the penultimate stage. Other notable names at the event included Tony Janetta, Martin Page, Dave Dalgleish, Grahame Dodd and Wattie Warwick. Remember them?
Anyway, don’t think that Morris ran away with the victory. He had to change the Metro’s diff twice during the day and was on his third with no more spares. As for Rintoul he didn’t have things easy either although the Escort behaved itself – for once. He had one of those huge, everlasting, awfy high speed, tummy churning spins on the penultimate stage of the day but there was little to hit on the wide open spaces of Milltown. Lucky sod. For once.
Amazing what you find when you’re not really looking, eh?
