Passenger Tyres
 Wessex Rally 1997 |  Phoenix Rally 1997 |
Les Parsons & Roger Davidson, as the only crew to find all the codeboards, were quite rightly paced first on North Devon MC's Barum Rally. This was Roger's first win on this event, having previously recorded 2nd, and 3rd places. Second place, and a pair of rally jackets kindly donated by sponsors Barum Passenger Tyres, went to Stuart Wood & Paul Waterton. They were competing in the wife's car, their familiar Sierra Estate having arrived back from Scotland (!) on the back of an AA truck.
James Menear & Ron Barrett scooped the non-experts class, placing just above semi-expert winners Mark Brimble & Peter Barnard. As usual the novices completed the same route but with much easier navigation. Ian Norris & Darren Goswell came home first novices dropping only 3 minutes (and one codeboard) all night.
The night started with a force eight gale, but fortunately this quickly blew over. This only left the narrow overgrown Devon lanes, and the tight sections to contend with. With the short night limiting the route to 105 miles, CoC Steve Sanders simply chose all the best lanes and strung them together with 63 controls and checks.
The first section at Myrtle Cottage set the flavour for the whole event, with a 2½ mile section. These 2½ miles were barely a car's width, and there was certainly nowhere to turn round should you wrong slot. Parsons/Davidson found this to their peril, dropping two minutes in their Sierra. Things were already beginning to shape up, with the recognised Masters coming in just into their minute (no penalty) and the rest just outside it.... With this occurring at most controls it was to be a night when every section would count, and by the end there would be clear winners and losers.
The early pace was set by Car 1 (Ian Orford/Bob Jones), this was because they spotted the codeboard at PC12. Dense undergrowth made finding the PCs somewhat tricky (even the course opener missed PC12!). Ian Harrison/Rob Watson (car 8) also managed to find the 'board, and settled in to second place. Fortunately fails were not handed out for codeboards (but they were for WAs and WDs) and the 20 minute penalty looked recoverable. Leaders Orford/Jones blotted their copy book at PC21, missing the board on a fast piece of road. This saw Harrison/Watson catapulted into the lead, on 5 minutes. Parsons/Davidson were on 8, with non experts Mark Lodder/Roger McKenzie 3rd with 18 minutes. Kingsley/PRAR were clean timewise, but missing PC12 was costing them 3 places...
Wrong approaches and departures were to be a major talking point over breakfast. The penalty for a WD/WA was one fail, and compared to the 20 minutes for missing a PC this was too harsh (IMHO - Ed). Both Harrison/Watson and Lodder/McKenzie were to fall foul of WDs, and these propelled Parsons/Davidson into the lead. Roger (Davidson) was struggling with his lunch though, having propelled some of it into the footwell... With a longish petrol halt, which allowed for some valetting of the leading Sierra, preliminary results were available hot off the fax before the second half commenced. The standings were:
1 Parsons/Davidson 12 min 2 Kingsley/PRAR 22 min 3 Wood/Waterton 28 min 4 Orford/Jones 34 min 5 Andrew Pile/Ray Snow 41 min
Windsor Car Club held the top two spots, and despite the second half being equally tight and twisty there were few changes in the order. A fail at TC34 cost Pile/Snow dearly, allowing Menear/Barrett into their place. The only other change in the top five was at TC56. PRAR had what can only be described as a nightmare matching nine tulips to nine junctions, and by the time their Nova rolled into TC56 Kingsley/PRAR had dropped 6 minutes. With Wood/Waterton cleaning the second half, they overtook and secured second place. Parsons/Davidson struggled as well, but despite dropping 5 minutes at TC56 they held on to their lead.
There only two retirements: Harrison/Watson had to cry off with a damaged exhaust, and Bob Badham/Jim Carr failed to finish in the Novice class. Chris Moore/Andy Coshan attempted to become the third retirees, but fortunately a tree prevented their Sunbeam ending up ten feet down in a field. After extracting it, they were able to make a dash to petrol to remain in the rally. Making a similar dash were ?/? in their Escort. They were latter forced to pay a visit to casualty, for ? to have his sprained elbow examined. A application with a bank had wrenched the wheel from his hand, and he was forced to complete the event in agony!
Pos Driver/Navigator f m 1 Les Parsons/Roger Davidson 19 2 Stuart Wood/Paul Waterton 28 3 Doug Kingsley/PRAR 34 4 Ian Orford/Bob Jones 43 5 James Menear/Ron Barrett 53 6 Mark Brimble/Peter Barnard 63 7 Barry Luxton/Phillip Luxton 1 34 8 Mark Lodder/Roger McKenzie 1 59 9 Andrew Pile/Ray Snow 1 79 10 Chris Pratt/Nick Ardern 2 36 11 Barbara Carter/Greg Evans 2 135 12 Bob France/Rob Liddiard 4 132 13 Chris Moore/Andy Coshan 12 211
1 Ian Norris/Darren Goswell 23 2 Paul Blackmore/Kerry Palmer 39 3 Derek Drayton/Richard Wood 44 4 James Coyne/Takashi Takeuchi 74 5 Pete Stapleton/Antoinette Ross 105 6 Martin Barrow/Colin Reed 107 7 Anthony Poole/Rob Doran 2 148
