Powerush 1996

1996 Barum Tyres Rally

A missing tie decider clause saw four crews tied for first place on Devizes & DMC's Basil Wadman Rally. But for being adjudged to have jumped a give-way, Gary Sellick/Ernie Clarke would have made it 5! More remarkably these five would have included all the class winners. For the record the winners (in order of engine size as would traditionally be used in these cases) were: Andy Juniper/Dean Taylor, Ian Mepham/Martin Smith, Colin Rodger/Sue Speller and George Mullins/Kim Bannister. George Mullins/Kim Bannister were first Novices, comfortably beating Cath Roberts/Rob Nugent who placed first Semi-Experts.

Starting from a night-club in Devizes, the Basil Wadman promised a straightforward night's sport pitched at the average competitor. The fact that it failed to get a result simply indicates the quality of the crews at the head of the field! Complying with the ASWMC standards for navigation, and with a route of about 130 miles on map 173, CoC Andy Garrett expected the combination of short snappy sections and time consuming navigation to be decisive.

The route began with a regularity section used to link to the bottom right of the map. From here the navigation turned trickier with a circular herringbone. It was actually easier than it looked and the majority of crews were able to avoid catastrophic penalties. However, a single penalty was to proved to be too many. With a quick trip up into the fog on Rockley Down not able to split the crews, half the field arrived at petrol with clean time cards. These included, amongst the usual experts, novices Mullins/Bannister and Ray Deacon/Paul Rodemark. Sellick/Clarke were tied with eventual class winners Roberts/Nugent for the Semi-Experts.

With more fog in the second half, the going got tougher, but with longer sections many crews were able to escape penalty despite wrong slots and miss plots. Mullins/Bannister nipped into the lead immediately out of petrol, with Deacon/Rodemark dropping a minute in their Metro. This section saw Bob Blows make a rare mistake and drop two minutes. These would see Steve Cole/Blows placed 5th O/A.

As ever, the experts breezed through the avoid map references at TC22, the novices however struggled. Struggle again they would as the section into TC30 proved harder than the simple tulips it appeared to be. With some confusing exit and entrance to grid square notation to deal with as well the route was beginning to separate the real experts. Only five crews retained their clean sheets at the end of the fourth time cards. These crews were destined to clean the final route card as well. Only at the Leigh Delamere finish did it became known that six crews had been judged to have jumped a give way. This reduced the number of finishers somewhat.

With no tie decider written into the regs the tie stood, although the novice crew of Mullins/Bannister put in the best performance in their Astra GTE. In his acceptance speech Dean Taylor mentioned that a few manned PCs could have made all the difference and indeed they would have.

PRAR

Final Results:

Pos Driver/Navigator   Car         f   m
 1  Juniper/Taylor     Sunbeam         0
 2  Mepham/Smith       Golf GTi        0
 3  Rodger/Speller     205 GTi         0
 4  Mullins/Bannister  Astra GTE       0
 5  Cole/Blows         205 GTi         3
 6  Orford/Jones       Charade GTi     6
 7  Shawley/White      Delta           7
 8  Roberts/Nugent     Kadett GSi     20
 9  Taylor/Bardwell    Astra          23
10  Chin/Liddiard      Manta          33
11  Pennel/Johnson     205 GTi        44
12  Davis/Brown        Escort         80
13  Deacon/Rodemark    MG Metro    1   9
14  Jeffries/Codling   Chevette    1  12
15  Piper/Meeham       Astra       1  47
16  Hall/Bryant        Imp         5 126