North Of England Tarmac Championship – Solway Coast Rally
Lee Hastings and Brian Findon take a popular win on this weekend’s Solway Coast Rally. Driving a Subaru Impreza, the boys from Dumfries finally made it to the end of their local rally at the third attempt and with it a fine 5th place overall. It was a successful return to the championship too after they dropped out on the North West Stages with a drive shaft problem, as they registered their first maximum points.
Although the car ran faultlessly all day this time, the victory wasn’t a straightforward one. After the first loop of 2 stages, Hastings returned to service in 9th overall and 3rd placed championship contender behind Barry Lindsay and Paul Swift. By mid morning the temperature was rising and the sun coming out to shine, so the stages were drying out and Lee upped his pace. He could only pull back 1 second over the next 10 miles to close the gap to the Lindsays but then a rare mistake on stage 6 by the Peugeot crew saw them spin a full 180o and lose 9 seconds. The consequences were that both crews would enter final service dead level. Maybe the Lindsays put on their championship heads over the final 2 stages to run in safe mode, although they still recorded their fastest times on the repeated stages, or maybe Hastings and Findon tried even harder – who knows but the Subaru would stop the clocks 4 seconds quicker on both stages to take the narrow win.
The Peugeot crew weren’t too unhappy with 7th overall and the runners up spot in the championship though. This earned them another good haul of points to stretch their respective leads at the top of the points tables and moves them one more step closer to another title. And if results go their way, that could be decided on the very next round in September.
Taking 3rd place in our championship on the rally were Durham crew Chris Anderson and Chris Thirling. They started at a steady pace to get used to the venue and completed the first loop in 12th place. An overshoot on stage 4 didn’t cost too much as they managed to move up to 9th. A good session with a tyre cutter opening up the tyres for the afternoon stages helped them go quicker on the drying stages even though by the end they lost a place by 1 second. The lads are starting to get some reliability after their woes of last year and the results are getting better too. After this weekend’s good run to 10th overall, they have both moved up to 3rd overall in the championship and the possibility of finishing even higher is there for them.
Paul Swift and David Cox were delighted to make the start of the rally after their roll a fortnight earlier on the Tyneside Stages. In those 14 days, the car has spent a lot of time in the bodyshop but looked resplendent once more come the opening stage. And after a cautious start, they would return to service in 7th place overall. Unfortunately, they picked up a puncture and were forced to take a stage maximum on SS4 This dropped them down to 32nd place and no chance of a good finish but they had clear runs in the afternoon to pick up 8 places and still take home some useful points.
The final points scorers were Paul Banks and James McWhir, although not competing in the same car. Paul was happy to finish the rally with top class points after the shock he got when starting the first test. Like most crews, he was new to the Dundrennan Ranges and was surprised by the technical nature of the stages and the amount gravel. He kept his head down though and drove his Peugeot 106 faster on each stage. James McWhir was called up to sit alongside the non-registered Michael Hunter in his Lada Samara. The Spadeadam man was another to have a good, trouble free run and ended up in 22nd place overall.
We only had 2 crews that went out of the rally and both decided to retire at service after the first pair of stages. Local crew Duncan Wardrop and Ian Crosbie were one of nine crews to pick up a puncture near the end of the second stage and this caused some damage to a drive shaft of their Subaru Impreza. Gareth White and Callum Atkinson also decided to take an early bath and head home with their Citroen C2R2 Max intact.
The championship tables have a familiar look as Barry Lindsay continues to lead the driver’s side with Paul Swift, Chris Anderson, Alistair Hutchinson and Chris Grieve giving chase. It’s a similar story in the co-driver’s table as well with Michael Lindsay ahead of David Cox, Chris Thirling and then comes Ann Forster, Paul Makepeace and Andrew Roughead tying with the same number of points. In class 1, Paul Banks and Ann Forster are leading; class 2 sees the Lindsays have already ‘won’; class 3 is headed by Chris Anderson and Chris Thirling; for class 4 it’s Paul Swift and David Cox and across in the ‘big class’ Michael Glendinning and Stuart Baillie are equal drivers with Mick Johnson the leading co-driver.
Special thanks go to Solway Car Club and their long-term sponsors DA Autoparts via usedcarparts.co.uk, for all their efforts in running the rally. They’re a really enthusiastic bunch of guys trying hard to provide a great day’s rallying for competitors. They have to be applauded for coming up with a ‘new venue’ for rallying and in a different geographical location too. It provides the championship with more variety and a different challenge to our contenders. This rally has improved on it’s inaugural run last year and the club are keen to continue in that vein with ideas for changes to the 2012 rally already in the pipeline.
The next round of the championship is also the penultimate round for 2011 and we’re going back to Otterburn for the Pirtek Lindisfarne Rally. The event takes place on Sunday 11th September when Tynemouth Motor Sport Club are planning to run 11 stages that will provide 95 miles of competition over the daunting military roads of Northumberland. The entry fee is £325; the Entry List is already open and closes for seeding on Friday 2nd September. The organisers are offering a reconnaissance session that starts at midday on Saturday the 10th and then the usual pre event preliminaries are taking place at the Otterburn Leisure Centre from 15:00. All the details are available at the club’s website – http://richard-burns.com/tdmc/lindisfarne