Swindon Phoenix Car Club

The Cowies of Swindon Highwayman Rally

18th/19th September 1993

Bullnose Rally 1993

Crossborder Rally 1993

Promoted by the Swindon Phoenix Car Club, the Highwayman was the latest round of the ACSMC Road Rally championship. It was also a round of the ASWMC, AWMMC and Cotswold MSG championships. It featured a good twisty route and decent navigation but was beset by circumstances beyond our control. A rave lead to the police closing one of the controls and a truck blocking one of the whites forced the cancellation of a later section. Thesetook the edge off what could have been a classic event.

After the organisers had resolved all the problems caused by the cancelled sections the local crew of Martyn Harris and Martin Saunders rolled out the winners with a very impressive clean sheet. Next in was the pink Alfa of Jon Richardson & Mike Wynn, confirming them as ACSMC champions for 1993 bar any major upsets. Close behind were Andy Juniper and Dean Taylor bouncing back after their exclusion from the Bullnose. Spirit of the meeting went to Wendy Cakebread for her hard work in resolving the results.

Even with 4 championships invited a very poor 26 crews arrived for the start, the ASWMC well represented with 12 crews making the journey. Scruitineering was slightly delayed whilst Jerry Mead finished his bath but ran smoothly once open. Signing on was at Cowies of Swindon, where the roadbook detailing the relaxed (Transport/Neutral) sections and the Black-Spots/QZs was issued. Further navigation was to come in the form of periodic handouts thrust in through the window at inopportune moments.

The OS added their oar into proceedings by deciding to reissue the maps a week before the event and the resultant reclassification of some whites and yellows lead to various last minute amendments. Also to help matters along, the standing instruction was to proceed the longest way round any triangles mentioned in the handouts. Most of these did not have codeboards but there where enough with to encourage you to always check. Most crews reported that they had got away with a few, but were disappointed when they discovered that they hadn't quite!

The first half proceeded smoothly to petrol, with only Martyn & Martin arriving clean at petrol. There where a few sections of route where the navigation required precision and as a result most crews had either missed a PC or dropped a few minutes as they went back for one. The route featured a few whites most of which where decently smooth.

At petrol news of the rave came too late for the CoC (Rob Smith) to issue the reroute there and then, and as a result crews had to use their penalty free lateness (ie in a Neutral section) to plot the reroute. This could have caused problems but there was more to come.

The course opening car had discovered the blocked white and immediately got on the blower to Rob. He hurriedly wrote out the reroute instructions to discover that the first car on the road had got to the control before hand and wanted a time and a handout. In the resulting confusion everybody was given a 15 minute delay allowance and the section reclassified as a transport (with the codeboards still to count).

Eventually everybody (bar 1 retirement) arrived wearily at the finish (Cirencester Little Chef) where they were surprised to find breakfasts almost ready for eating and service much better than usual. Given the complications of the results they were out quite quickly, and the few queries were rapidly resolved.

It could have been a good event but circumstances had got the better of it. The second half became a bit of a farce with two cancelled sections but most people managed to cope. As usual a good clean run without any diversions produced the result, it was mearly a pity that it could not have been as the organisers had hoped. Better luck to everybody next year!

PRAR

Final Results:

Pos Driver/Navigator                    f   m
 1  Martyn Harris/Martin Suanders           0
 2  Jon Richardson/Mike Wynn               17
 3  Barry Luxton/Phillip Luxton            19
 4  Andy Juniper/Dean Taylor               24
 5  Steve Wood/Paul Waterton               24
 6  Joanna Johnson/Pete Johnson            25
 7  Bob Davis/Mark Newberry                26
 8  Chris Beer/Adrian Beer                 29
 9  Nick Piper/Bob Muttram                 50
10  W B Taylor/Paul Taylor                 61
11  John Upham/PRAR                        86
12  Andy Spindlow/John Monaghan         1  58
13  Rob Oliver/Dave Collins             1  65
14  Michaela Jones/Gareth Hurford-Jones 1  95
15  Jace Shawley/Nick Jaggard           2 115
16  Barbara Carter/Calvin Fenwick       2 122
17  Graham Dear/Dave Waldron            2 170
18  Kevin Smith/Pauline Smith           5  95
19  Ben Jefferis/Tom Jefferis           6 327
20  Vic Quayle/Craig Downer             7 276
21  Barry Williams/Paul Goffron         8 299
22  K J Stroud/S W Godbold              8 354
23  Bob Ward/Paul Biddle               11 380
24  Duncan Mays/Mark Mays              11 491