Rally - Golden Years

This weekend, Saturday/Sunday 6/7 July, East Ayrshire Car Club is hosting its 'Golden Years' weekend at Kames (near Muirkirk), celebrating 50 years of club Motorsport and National Motorsport week.

There will be a whole host of attractions including Jari-Matti Latvala's WRC Finland (2010) winning Ford Focus WRC09 and a 1950's Connaught racing car plus many more. Activities have been planned for the kids, and passenger rides round the sprint track or rally track will be on sale with proceeds going to charity.

Admission is free with the gates open at 10.30 am each day and there will also be a visit from the Muirkirk Pipe band at some point in the day - so bring your dancing shoes and get ready to 'hooch'.

And Mr 'Golden Years' himself will be there too, Jim McRae.

Rally - Scottish Rally report

That's the main RSAC Scottish Rally report up on the website now. Class roundup plus News & Gossip to follow.

http://www.jaggybunnet.co.uk/2013/07/02-july-rsac-main-report/

Rally - Turnbull Trophy

There's a full entry list for Sunday's next round of the BLUE Scottish Tarmac Championship up on the website now. Also details of how to find Albemarle - it's in Englandshire, even though it's a round of the Scottish Championship!

Last year's winner, in a Renault Clio, Peter Taylor heads the entry this year in his Focus WRC, but there's a healthy dose of Scots marauding over the border. Rally starts at 09:30 Hrs.

http://www.jaggybunnet.co.uk/2013/07/02-july-turnbull-trophy-rally-news/

Rally - Meeke for Finland

Kris Meeke and Chris Patterson will compete for the Abu Dhabi Citroën Total World Rally Team on Rally Finland at the end of this month, 31^st July. They will replace Khalid Al Qassimi and Scott Martin as Al Qassimi will be unable to take part.

Always keen to promote talented drivers, the Emirati driver asked Kris to take his place.

“Unfortunately, I cannot take part in the Finnish round,” said the Sheikh. “Kris has real potential as a driver and has the maturity you need to enjoy a sensible and efficient race. I’d like to give him the chance to express himself fully at this unusual event. I hope he is very successful there.”

“This is an incredible opportunity for us!” said a delighted Kris Meeke. “Taking part in Rally Finland in a DS3 WRC is a dream that I didn’t think would become reality. I’d like to thank Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi and Citroën Racing for the trust they have placed in us. We’re going to benefit from the advice and expertise of a team that has won the world championship eight times. We therefore have every chance of securing a good result.”

Rally - A real 'Scottish'

Charles Samson was an interested spectator at Saturday’s Scottish Rally. However, the 1975 and 1977 Scottish Rally Champion was a little dismayed at the way rallying is going these days.

Charles and his brother Alec contested the 1975 Scottish Rally in their Mk1 Ford Escort. They finished just outside the top ten in 11^th place that year, but that was only because they tipped the car backwards over a banking in Whiteash Forest. “We lost only two minutes,” recalled Charles, “but we weren’t the only ones. The Flying Finish caught out a few crews on that last corner, so we were in good company!”

But here’s the thing. On Saturday, the Scottish Championship event winner, Euan Thorburn, spent less than 36 minutes driving competitively over 5 Special Stages. Way back in 1975, the winner took 4 hours 1 minute and 56 seconds to drive over 44 Special Stages. In fact, the Scottish Rally that year had been reduced to ‘only’ 3 days because of political considerations and the state of the economy – some things never change, eh?

So it was with a sense of loss that Charles reflected on the glory of Scottish rallying, but who was the man who won the rally outright that year?  It was none other than Roger Albert Clark in the bright red Cossack Escort taking his third successive international victory in a MkII and winning the Scottish for the sixth time in 12 years.

And by the way, Charles omitted to tell me just how far behind Roger he was, but I was there. The difference was nearly 20 minutes, but then Roger had a ‘works’ car and Charles and Alec’s machine was built by one Willie Greig Esq.

Rally - Pike's Peak

Yesterday, Sebastien Loeb and the Peugeot 208 T16 blitzed the Pike's Peak Hillclimb record in America. His time of 8m 13.878s shattered the previous record of 9m 46.164s by well over a minute and a half. Incredhillable!

It just makes you wish all the more that our man McRae was still around, eh?

Rally - The aftermath

The mobile editorial office on duty!

There were a few items of 'hate mail' (in the nicest possible way of course) in the in-box this morning because I hadn't updated the Blog on Saturday from the rally. There was a simple reason for that. I didn't have time. That was because the 'Motorsport News' report had to come first, and that was my priority on Saturday.

On the Jim Clark Rally there were three of us reporting on the various modules, classes and timetables, but on Saturday there was only me, because there was just so much on elsewhere. Admittedly there weren't the same number of entries on the Scottish as the JCR, but even so, Saturday was a non-stop information gathering exercise. No sooner had one class or module arrived at service than the next one came along, and sometimes they overlapped. I didn't even have time for lunch, and that was simply criminal.

Sunday was spent collating the information and results ands writing up the various reports. Now you will have to be the judge on Wednesday of whether it was all worthwhile or not.

I barely had time to get any Tweets out, but I did manage a few. So, my apologies to all my regulars, hopefully normal service will be resumed at the next event!