Basingstoke Motor Club

Cross Border Rally

12/13 October 1996

AJ's Debut in White

Phoenix Rally 1996

Inter-Association Rally The 1996 Pothunter Rally

CoC Andy 'Smiley' Thomas put on a very good show with one of the most taxing Cross Borders ever. With time penalties recorded at every control he managed to catch everybody out at one point or another. This was without the use of ludicrous navigation, but simply by keeping the sections tight and using some of Hampshire's white roads.

Starting from Basingstoke MC's Malshanger Club House the route used started with the familiar roads around Ibworth. These almost saw the retirement of Kingsley/PRAR, as they both became passengers on a hedgewards excursion. Fortunately the only damage was to derange the spotlights and they were able to clean the section by the skin of their teeth. Other crews reported moments at the gravelly square right. Moving quickly along the route took in the triangle at Ashe Warren before using the Portals White down into Overton. Finding the first slot into the whites proved quite difficult, with quite a few overshoots. The next slot, into the Portals white itself, proved even harder and this saw many crews drop the odd minute or six. Juniper/Taylor took this opportunity to move into a joint lead with Rodgers/Speller.

The next section saw Juniper/Taylor move into a decisive lead as they cracked the navigation quickly. Behind them other top navigators were struggling with the totalled grid lines. Kingsley/PRAR and Mepham/Smith resorting to using the 'drive every road because it's here somewhere' tactic, with varying numbers of cars in tow! This was to set the shape of the event as they plummeted to 8^th and 14^th respectively. Better results in the second half allowed them to move back up, but they could not catch Juniper/Taylor. The only other crew to clean the section were Semi-Experts Chris Pratt/Nick Arden.

With relatively large penalties accrued already, the odd minute dropped here and there was not going to make a great difference, but they could still add up to a very poor result. It seemed that the regularity section Smiley had included would be wasted.

Despite the regularity there was little shuffling amongst the top ten on the final few sections in to petrol. Mepham/Smith started to make amends for their navigational problem and by halfway had moved back to 6^th tucked in just behind Kingsley/PRAR. The standings at half-way were:

Leaving petrol Kingsley/PRAR managed to pick up a curious penalty. It turned out that PRAR had been caught short, and finding themselves at the wrong end of the queue of cars, they elected to take a late start time. This proved to be a mistake because the link out from petrol was a standard section and they had just picked up a five minute penalty for no good reason! Fortunately at the end it didn't matter, but at the time it was quite embarrassing!

Juniper/Taylor were untouchable through the second half setting the best times on the majority of sections. Rodgers/Speller however had a mishap on the first section out from petrol, going the wrong way at a triangle and getting a decoy codeboard. This momentarily dropped them as low a 5^th O/A. They did however set a respectable time on the section, correctly solving the coded map references. Setting an equally good time saw Harrison/Watson move up to second place. They were unable to match this time and they quickly began to plummet down the order as normal service was resumed.

The remaining experts enjoyed a good tussle in rest of the leg. This eventually saw Rodger/Speller move back into second place as first Mepham/Smith dropped a codeboard and Kingsley/PRAR struggled with the contour lines defining the route down to TC30. Dutton/Goodman's poor time at TC23 saw them struggle despite cleaning much of the second half.

Wearily the crews made their way to Fleet Services for the results. With many crews confessing to errors and mistakes only Juniper/Taylor were left as the winners. The regional championships are now starting to hot up with only one ACSMC round to run. Juniper/Taylor need only to finish ahead of Mepham/Smith to secure the championship. The LCAMC has three rounds to run, and is the most open of the three championships. Mepham/Smith are leading at the moment, but with worst scores to be discarded things will change. The ASEMC scoring system is a mystery to me but Mepham/Smith seem to be leading!

PRAR

Final Results:

Open

Pos Driver/Navigator                      Car           Penalty

 1  Andy Junpier/Dean Taylor              Sunbeam          10.23
 2  Colin Rodger/Sue Speller              205 GTi          27.03
 3  Paul Dutton/Mark Goodman              Escort           30.20
 4  Doug Kingsley/PRAR                    Nova GTE         36.04
 5  Simon Larner/Gavin Rogers             Escort           50.00
 6  Ian Mepham/Martin Smith               Golf GTi         53.32
 7  Ian Harrison/Rob Watson                                55.15
 8  Cath Roberts/Doug Robinson            Kadett           68.00
 9  Chris Pratt/Nick Arden                                 72.00
10  Rob Norrington/Chris Moore            Sunbeam          83.15
11  Neil Lewis/Bob Muttram                Lancia Fulvia    92.34
12  Andy Watson/Simon Gudgeon             405 Estate       93.27
13  Mark Loder/Matt Clark                                  99.18
14  Ray Deacon/Paul Rodemark                              114.17
15  Babara Carter/Peter Barnard           Corrolla        120.38
16  Steve Penrose/Allen Asken                          1F 146.47
17  Simon Millington/Richard Whitehouse                1F 171.45
18  Dave Bushby/Roger Mckenzie                         5F 207.31
19  Chin/Rob Liddiard                     Opel Manta   5F 242.26

Novices

 1  David Asken/Steve Barber                               66.03
 2  Nick Piper/Mike Bennett                            3F 258.03
 3  Rob Reynolds/Russell Briggs                       10F 440.00
 4  James Coyne/Richard Howatt                        14F 457.00