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?