Sevenoaks & District Motor Club Ltd.

The Kent Rally

19th/20th February 2000

SE/CS Round 1

Bruce Robinson
Road Rally 2000

Pheasant Plucker Rally 2000

The South's 2000 Road Rally season started last weekend with the Kent Rally 2000. It was the first round of the SE/CS 2000 championship and the LCAMC championship. With the organisers deliberately using simple navigation, there was a tie for 1st place between two Master crews. Steve Cole/Bob Blows (last year's champions) and Martin Smith/PRAR both cleaned the 160 mile route and CoC Chin decided that to split the tie on the basis of engine size would be unfair.

Drive of the night went to Doug Kingsley/Ben Greenfield who won the Semi-Expert award, and beat the first Experts (Ken Pape/John Stringer) to boot. Kingsley/Greenfield only dropped a single minute, whilst negotiating a farm yard and otherwise would have made a three-way tie for first.

The novice award went to Michael Church/Robert Jacobs, who managed to bring their Micra home with only 12 minutes dropped. All SE/CS rounds this year have a concurrent Clubman's event. The Kent Rally 2000 Clubman was won by Frank/Greenway who completed the first half of the route to petrol. They only dropped 3 minutes, which would have put them 5th at this point in the main event.

The first half of the route mostly used the North Downs, with the clear skies allowing some of the descents to become very icy. Only one crew succumbed to the conditions though: Ed Wisniewski/Adrian Weeks discovered a nasty ice patch the hard way! There were a few of the classic Kent sections included, Kemsing hairpin attracting a few spectators - a rare site on Southern Road Rallies these days.

At petrol the run of the event was clear. The two Master crews were taking it all in their stride (despite protests from PRAR that he hadn't had to plot any thing a complex as a clock face on last year's EMAMC championship!). Showing well were Kingsley/Greenfield, posting a clean sheet. Chasing behind were a gaggle of crews with single figure penalties.

The second half was a run back through the Weald. This took in more of Kent's fine lanes, including areas where the OS have only a cursory knowledge of the geography! the navigation continued to be straight forward, although a section defined as LARGE or more precisely THE NEXT SIZE UP cause a few navigators to faulter. (The answer was XL, but most crews found the control by driving to the end of the road and then heading towards the Neutral section start!) By the finish at Clacket's Lane services only the Masters remained clean. The visit to the yard at Leighbridge Farm caught many crews out, but no-one really struggled with the navigation, only the terrain and the timekeeping.

PRAR

Results

M	E	SE	N	C	Driver/Navigator	Car	F	m
=1					Smith/PRAR	Corrolla	Clean
=1					Cole/Blows	205 GTi	Clean
		1			Kingsley/Greenfield	Nova GTE		1
				1	Frank/Greenway	Escort II		3
	1				Pape/Stringer	Escort I		4
			1		Church/Jacobs	Micra		12
	2				Wright/Barber	Escort II		13
		2			Bushby/Clark	Escort II		13
			2		Sayers/Stokoe	Fiesta		15
				2	Clark/Gray	306	1	4
				3	Thompson/Thompson	Skoda 130L	1	5
		3			Johnson/Miles	106	2	14
		4			Coyne/Azzopardi	205	2	19
			3		Buddle/Buddle	Mini HL	2	38
		5			McLachlan/McLachlan	Escort II	3	16
		6			Powter/Williams	Cavalier	3	40
			4		Johns/Coney	Disco.	12	57
				4	Rose/Rose	Mini	33	48
		R			Collins/Ayling	Golf GTi	Retired
				R	Brewer/Hall	Mini	Retired
			R		Wisniewski/Weeks	Nova	Retired

NB: The results I have classify everbody in one list. As the clubmen only did half the route and the Novices had different Navigation I haven't given an overall result as it is an unfair comparison.