Rally - Whatever happened to?

Yesterday’s trawl through the dust and cobwebs ahead of this weekend’s Voly Grampian Forest Rally prompted a few more thoughts. Over the years this sport has produced a truck load of individual talents and yet so few ever made it to the higher echelons of professional rallying or the World Rally Championship.

Scotland has produced four World Champions, Louise, Colin, Derek and Robert while England has produced two, David Richards and Richard Burns, and fingers crossed Wales will get its chance soon with Elfyn. So how come countries a lot smaller than ours can produce so many more world stars? A conundrum, Eh?

Take a look back at 1990, and the North East’s premier motor sports event. A counter in both the RAC MSA Mintex National and Esso Scottish Championships, ADMC’s Granite City Rally that year offered 13 stages totalling 80 miles of forest roads contained in a fairly compact 225 mile route.

After a stirring battle, Jim McRae and Rob Arthur in an Audi quattro won the event by a mere 12 seconds from Japan’s Hideaki Myoshi with Keith Oswin in a Mitsubishi Galant VR4. The top Group N crew were Robbie head and Steve Bond in fifth place overall in their Ford Sapphire Cosworth but Finland’s Mika Sohlberg’s Lancia Delta Integrale violently encountered a rather stout piece of granite and Jimmy Girvan rolled his Toyota Celica GT4.

However, there was more ‘local’ success further down the 115 car field with Dom Buckley Jnr and Douglas Redpath finishing a superb 12th overall and winning the Group N Mazda Challenge category. And even further back was a relative newcomer to the sport. Alister McRae and David Senior won the 1300cc class in their Vauxhall Nova finishing a thoroughly creditable 36th overall amongst such tough company on such an arduous event.

Donald Milne didn’t get far. The Metro Nissan’s rear diff failed on the start line of the third stage at Gartly Moor and a certain Jon Burn with Colin Ross failed to finish after they went OTL with a very troubled outing in a Talbot Sunbeam.

Oh! And by the way, the Entry Fee was £215 plus £18.50 for the Bowring Insurance – happy days, eh?

And if you’re looking for more info, it’s all in the books:

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