ASP / NETRC 2015 DCC Stages Results
So close to victory for Feeney and Hale. After an eventful DCC Stages with a couple of dramas thrown in, the new for the day pairing of Nigel Feeney and Shona Hale had to settle for second overall having led the rally for most of the day.
It was a wet sunrise to greet the capacity 75-car entry for our annual dash around the Royal Highland Showground near Edinburgh. The crews that had a wet tyre option ran them for the opening pair of tests before the spring sunshine dried the old Ingliston racetrack and newly added service roads to allow slick tyres to be used for the remainder of the day.
Nigel and Shona were last on the list of reserves and only managed to get a run on the Saturday morning so scrutineering and documentation were a wee bit of a rush; they set off into the opening test last on the road and hoping their service crew would arrive by the time they’d completed their first run. This didn’t appear to hold them up on the road, as cars seemed to move out the way when they spotted a red Subaru in their mirrors. Once tyres pressure were reset to a more realistic level, the handling improved and they were now leading the rally. However, the organisers decided that they should be reseeded to run in the top 5 for SS3. They held this narrow lead until stage 7 when a rear trailing arm snapped on the first of three laps and the car decided it would steer from the rear ! A pity as it would have been very tight at the finish with a little Darrian hot on the scent.
Taking 4th overall in the rally and second championship points, plus Joker, we had Stuart Walker and Julie McGuire. Their Skoda Fabia never missed a beat all day and ended the rally with the same bumper and front end on it too. And that’s some feat as Stuart hurled the car around the tight square corners with great vim – he was visibly just as quick chasing the fastest crews. Stuart now leads the driver’s section of the championship and with good reliability will be a man to keep an eye on for the rest of the season.
Ed Todd / Andy Brown were next in their GTM Coupe following a daylong battle with the Subaru Impreza of Lee Hastings. The 4 wheel drive car took an 11 seconds lead on the opening greasy test before the Durham crew took back 2 seconds on the next one despite a 360o spin. Hastings regained those lost seconds on SS3 as the GTM arrived at the stop line to find the car wouldn’t select any gears; this was traced to a loose gearbox mounting. A fix in service just proved to be temporary as the same thing happened at the finish of stage 4. Poor Andy had to push the car back into service area again where a proper job was done to secure the mounting to the chassis. Fortunately, the problem wasn’t affecting stage times as they took another 4 seconds back to go into the lunch halt just 3 seconds adrift. A big push on the two afternoon tests saw the Solway driver 2 seconds slower on each run and this meant that he would end up 7th overall just 1 second behind.
Stuart Baillie was reunited with David Crosbie for this event; a rally where he scored well last year. There were no major dramas over the opening pair of stages but on the next one they dropped about 30 seconds when a brake pipe burst. The green Subaru was fair moving along when a flexi pipe burst causing quite a moment as Stuart resorted to using the handbrake to help with the retardation. Once fixed, they were back up to speed again but ran out of stages to recover the time loss and had to settle for 8th overall.
Chris McCallum was next up in in his Ford Escort Mark2. Chris had a steady run with no problems to report and the East Ayrshire Car Club man grabbed some useful points with his 14th overall. Stephen and Louise Hope were next with their similar car but ended their day 5 places further down the order. A poor start was down to having no anti roll bar connected but even after this was rectified, Stephen still complained that he couldn’t get much heat into the tyres. A few moments off on the grass was a testimony to his efforts but the car just wouldn’t turn into corners. At halfway the couple found themselves down in a lowly 34th and with some more success in the afternoon, their 11th and 10th fastest times pushed them back up the timesheets.
Tom Middlemiss and Richard Stewart finished in 26th place and with it took maximum points in our up to 1600cc class. Tom usually rallies a Vauxhall Nova with a 2 litre motor wedged under the bonnet but it wasn’t quite ready to go for this event so Tom wheeled out his other car – a 1600cc Vauxhall Corsa. It’s the shell and most of the mechanical bits that Kev Monaghan used until late last year so Tom quickly settled in and was a happy man with his day’s efforts. And a further 12 seconds behind were Geoffrey Harkness and Caroline Lodge with a similar car. Geoffrey’s suffered with a couple of reliability issues at the start of this year, which is something new for him. The opening pair of tests caused a few concerns with some banging noises coming from the front end but a good spanner check must have tightened everything up nicely as they just got on with enjoying the rally after that. Our final finisher was Kevin Mathers in his 1900 Peugeot 205. The Hawick man suffered a few cooling problems after the fan touched the radiator and then started shedding blades. He made it to the finish though despite his eyes constantly watching the temperature gauge more than the road.
We ‘lost’ 9 crews during the rally through a variety of mechanical problems and Gordon Winning and Robin Laird were the first to go when a crack was discovered in a camshaft pulley of their Ford Escort’s engine before the first stage; Nick Thorne / Ian Murray retired the Honda Civic Type R with a driveshaft problem after SS3; a similar issue forced Michael Farmer and Bruce Lindsay out on the third stage having had a shaft go on the opening test and fettling the car during the rerun only to lose out again as soon as they tried it competitively; Liam Walling and the non-registered John Askew made it one stage further before they too suffered the same fate; Ross McSkimming / Charley Sayer Payne stopped during stage 5 when the oil pressure in their Citroen dropped dramatically – just before the stage was cancelled; Neil Thompson made it into the afternoon runs before he lost out with a driveshaft problem as he was just outside the top 10; and finally we had 3 crews who retired after stage 6. The first was Jane Nicol, sitting alongside the non-registered Andrew Gallagher, when the turbo of their Ford Escort Mk6 blew near the end of the test; Paul Ballantyne and Graham Bruce called it a day when the power steering pump of their Renault Clio developed a huge leak and our final retiree was the versatile Alan Cowan who was in the silly seat of Gerry Gaffney’s Mitsubishi Evo when they encountered ‘steering problems’
Our thanks go to Dunfermline Car Club for all their efforts in providing another different challenge for the championship – the Blackwood DCC Stages. Rallyday wasn’t without it’s issues and with the spotlight on everything becoming more safety aware after the events and reactions from the last year, the little hitches were dealt with well by Graham Provost and his team. It’s a shame that circumstance meant they lost SS5 and couldn’t run the final test either when a competing crew felt unwell.
We now have almost 7 weeks before round 5 of this year’s championship when we head to Crail. It’s been 5 years since the championship visited the East Neuk of Fife and the famous Crail Raceway. We welcome Glenrothes Motor Sport Club and look forward to their Summer Stages rally on the wide-open old airfield that looks out onto the waters of the north eastern point of the Forth of Forth. The Regulations for the event are expected to be published about the 1st of May so watch www.glenrothes-msc.com for more information. The rally is usually well supported and anyone thinking of contesting it should remember how quickly the entries for the DCC Stages were snapped up – within 1 day ! So if you’re interested in the Summer Stages, don’t hang about …