North of England Tarmacadam Rally Championship second round

Swift by name and swift by nature. Paul Swift and co-driver David Cox produced a controlled drive to finish top crew on this weekend’s Cartersport Jack Frost Stages. Driving their immaculate Ford Escort Mark2 the local boys were determined to improve on their finish on the Christmas Stages. The lack of snow and ice this time around meant they could attack the 8 stages with more confidence than before. Their tyre choice was much better too and the precision driving expert was able to ‘do the day job’ to great effect. In the opening stages he set a couple of 4th quickest times before moving up to 3rd overall at the halfway point. After lunch he was one of the crews to struggle with the conflicting stage furniture / diagram information that caused some competitors to take the wrong route on stage 5. The stage was eventually cancelled so Paul and David consolidated with more consistent, neat and tidy driving to maintain position. Going into the final stage and the darkness, Paul decided not to gamble on pushing any harder and settled for a fine 3rd overall.

Although they were our top crew, Ann Forster finished in second place overall alongside the unregistered Martyn Tinker. Ann had ‘jumped ship’ from Stephen Bethwaite’s Nova for the day and her regular driver was there supporting her with a huge smile on her face all day as she enjoyed the Lotus power so much.

Next up was the Scottish pairing of Stuart Baillie and Dave Cranston. The boys were making their debut in this year’s championship and brought along the recently re-fettled Subaru Impreza. With a gearbox returned from TegSport and fitted in the week leading up to the rally, they thought they were ready to go until the clutch was started acting up when the car was loaded onto the trailer for Saturday’s run to scrutineering. This was fixed before the long drive to Croft and then it became apparent during the rally’s opening stage that all was not well with the head gasket. More time was lost on stage 2 when they stalled after a spin. Stages 3 and 4 were improvements before they went to lunch in 10th place. Top 3 times on the next 2 saw them move up to 4th before the final dark stage. As neither of the team had been to Croft before they lost a bit of pace on the final run to end up a fine 5th overall. A character building experience that earned them a good bagful of Championship points too.

Next up was another new crew to the championship – Simon and Janice Moore. Driving their Renault Clio, the husband and wife pairing scored consistently top 9 times all day to earn them a 6th place finish. Their only problem was a nearside rear disc that was fouling on the wheel. Once they realised this, they managed to change the offending item in the lunch break and then continue their march up the leaderboard with an improved braking system.

Chris Grieve and Paul Makepeace continued on from their fine 7th overall at the snowy Christmas Stages to take the same result on the return visit to Croft. Although part of their result last time was attributed to having the right tyres on their Peugeot 106, the boys showed it wasn’t the only reason for their success. Chris capitalised on his circuit racing experience of Croft and showed he’s got plenty of driving skill too. A spin on the first proper stage left them down in 20th place and with plenty of commitment they worked their way back up the leaderboard and 4th championship crew. A further 23 seconds back were the Northallerton AC members Alistair Hutchinson / St John Dykes. The local crew managed to wheel out their Renault Clio after their recent troubles but they’d still brought the troubles along too. On the opening stage they lost all power steering. The issue turned out not to be a jumped belt but damaged pipe. As they didn’t have a spare, plan B was to stop any further leaks and build up the arm muscles. Unfortunately for them the stage layouts contained many tight chicanes that most crews were unhappy with. 7 stages later, an exhausted Alistair was happy to finish 8th overall. And in 9th place were Dave Conley / Mike Scrimgour with their Historic specification Hillman Avenger. Having solved their head gasket problem from their last outing, it would be the gearbox to give them grief this time around. They lost 5th gear on stage 4 and then 3rd would become troublesome in the afternoon. However, they continued to push and the box held out to the end.

Next up were the Lindsays in 11th overall but an unfamiliar low position in relation to our championship. They suffered in the tight chicanes and rarely having the right tyres on for the right weather conditions; in 15th overall were an untroubled Chris Anderson / Chris Thirling getting a second successive finish; Rob Hornshaw and Dave Boyes ended up 16th after 2 minutes of penalties were applied for ‘taking an incorrect route’ – a real shame as they would have been 4th overall otherwise; Neil Ayre was happy after his trouble free day to end up 18th overall; Chris Myers / Matt Whattam were next up in a very battered looking Mitsubishi after getting too close to a chicane on stage 1; Paul Dolan was another to lose out with the chicanes as he had to use reverse gear often to get around some of them even though his handbrake was working well; Barrie Thomson / Jerry Hettrick were pleased to be very much on the pace of the class 2 masters – the Lindsays – until they completed one more loop than necessary on stage 7; Bill Bates and daughter Kari Bosworth managed to get their smoking Lotus Elise to the finish and it’s scheduled rebuild; Geoff Simpson / Mick Johnson were happy to finish with an unmarked or damaged Mitsubishi this time even though they lost out with a wrong tyre choice from the off; Kevin Hullah and Chris Harding return after gearbox woes last time netted 55th; followed by David Martin and Dave Bell whose Vauxhall Astra struggled with fuel problems on stage 2 and left them in 76th position but they would recover to 56th by the end and finally 1 second behind in 57th place was Richard Clark / James McWhir in an ageing, mechanically standard Peugeot 205 that had over 110K on the clock – apart from a small fire they had no problems.

So after the opening 2 rounds at Croft, the driver’s championship is led by Chris Grieve and followed by Paul Swift, Barry Lindsay, Chris Myers and Stuart Baillie while the co-driver’s table is headed by Paul Makepeace from the tying pair of David Cox and Ann Forster followed by Michael Lindsay and Matt Whattam.

Special thanks go to Darlington DMC for organising the Cartersport Jack Frost Stages. They managed to provide warmer weather than last year and despite losing a couple of stages, put on another stern, testing rally. They’re already talking with the Croft Circuit owners about next year’s event and considering improvements to make the show better.

The third round of the championship is the Legend Fires North West Stages. This is run over the weekend of Friday 4th and Saturday 5th February and will be based once again around the Norbreck Castle Hotel in Blackpool. As usual there will be a ‘Rally Village’ where all the pre rally stuff, start, parc ferme, finish and presentation will take place there. A couple of the Friday night stages are run just over the road from the Norbreck so spectators are well looked after too. The organisers have already received more than the 100 entries that they will start with so if you haven’t put your entry in yet it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get a run. Full details are available the event’s website www.nwstages.co.uk