 Preston Rally 1995 |  Alnite Rally 1996 |
Preston Rally 1995 | Alnite Rally 1996 |
With the top crew from 8 of the 13 regional associations competing the Twister was going to be tough. With the entire route running within 35 miles of the centre of London, CoC Pete Tilling had pulled out all the stops. 180 miles of lanes, picking their way around the comuter belt. With 57 time controls and almost as many PCs the pressure was on to maintain the 30mph schedule.
Leading the field away were Doug Kingsley/PRAR, the ACSMC first team captains. Close behind (for a while at least) were Mike Biss/Cath Woodman (leading the LCAMC first team). The rest of the field read like a roll call of navigational experise, with only the Welsh and the more distant Scots not represented, even the Irish (ANICC) had managed to send a team! The most notable absentees were the EMAMC, depriving the Pashleys and Guy Robinson/Charles Wheeldon of a run.
The fun started almost immdeiately: less than 500m into the first section a very slippery 50 left saw the first action. Worst off were Steve Cole/Bob Blows, managing to get their 205 some 200m down into the field. They only extricated the car after resorting to sporting trial tyre pressures, and dropping 10 minutes! The next section saw crews beginning to fall away. An easy to take wrong slot caught Biss/Woodman, who losy 8 minutes going back for the loop. On a 4 minute section this was costly.
From the start at Dunstable the route had wended it's way SW to just outside Berkhampstead. The next section was to separate the navigational men from the navigational giants. Quite simply the instructions were: 'Using the white through "om" to "o", proceed to TC8 via NW171 and only one section of yellow unfenced on both sides'. Easy Huh? If it's so easy why did 19 (of the top 30) crews miss both PCs on this section? Only 5 cars remained clean at this point. By TC10 at buckland Common this was reduced to none, despite the route instrustions only being map references! It was at this point that Martin/Martingale took the lead, jointly with Paul Wright/Mark Goodman.
The section down to TC14 gave some crews an opportunity to close the gap to the leaders as they both dropped 3 minutes. TC17 saw Wright/Goodman dropped from the lead, as Kingsley/PRAR moved up into second spot despite a massive 3 minute penalty. TC19 was to see the demise of Kingsley/PRAR as the Cavalier's electrics succumbed to the weather. Despite the best attentions of a number of mechanics at half-way they were not recoverable, and they were forced to compete the second half with the headlights wired into the cigar lighter!
At half-way the standings were: AEMC leading with 1 fail 89 minutes, 2nd ACSMC first team 2 fails 49 minutes and 3rd LCAMC first team 2 fails 72 minutes. In the individual competition under a third of the field were fail free with Martin/Martingale leading on 6 minutes. Alan Thurbon/Ian Buxton and Kingsley/PRAR tied for second some 5 minutes bak. The only notable absentees were Gordon Milbank/Paul Sharp, reported to have embraced a tree.
First section out from half-way was the obligatory regularity section, lest any ties occur. The section to TC27 was a point wher the best navigators could make a difference. The route instructions simply indicated the points where the route joined and left a district border. Sorting this out too two minutes off Martin/Martingale, allowing both Kingsley/PRAR and Thurbon/Buxton to close up a minute. No one could clean the section. After a very short petrol halt the next few sections saw Andy Juniper/Dean Taylor put up a good show, dropping their first minute at TC48, unfortunately their ACSMC first teammates Kigsley/PRAR and Cole/Blows were both picking up fails as they slipped OTL, and the ACSMC team dropped to third.
The route became a bit patchy with some longer neutral sections through St Albans and Welwyn, but Tilling had kept the pressure on by keeping everything tight. As the navigators were becoming accustomed to the style of the route instructions more zeros were appearing on the score sheets. Thurbon/Buxton sneaked another minute on Martin/Martingale at TC30, although they were to drop it later on.
Going into the final quarter the story was more of who could hang on fail free, rather than who could make the pace. (And at this point my back-up copy of the report expired, sorry - Ed)
PRAR |  Inter Association | Twister Rally | 
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Pos Driver/Navigator Car f m Not recorded here (yet)
