North of England Tarmac Rally Championship – North West Result
Alistair Hutchinson and St John Dykes take the championship spoils after a difficult North West Stages. Driving their usual Renault Clio, the Northallerton crew will be the first to admit it wasn’t an easy victory. And that’s not just because of the horrible weather – lots of wind and rain on Friday night and then just lots and lots of rain on Saturday’s 20 stages.
The Teesdale boys probably thought that after driving most of their last rally with no assistance to the steering, they could forget about any further possible problems after a pipe change before this rally. However after the 4 stages on Friday night, a new power steering pump had to be fitted before parc ferme. Then they suffered a problem with some wheel studs before a drive shaft went on the 4th visit to Weeton and they ended up with a stage maximum time. A steady run over the last 6 stages got them home to a fine 10th overall and top championship points.
Next up in 14th overall was Pete Gibson and Chris Dodds. Pete is returning to the series after being runner up in 2009 when he was driving a Nova. He’s now acquired a Mitsubishi Evo 6 and looking to get higher up the running order. The plan didn’t work for this event as he was seeded at 61 after finishing inside the top 20 on the 2009 version of North West. However, he immediately set about proving the organisers wrong and finished Friday’s 4 stages in 29th place, despite the demister not working. He struggled on all rally with the problem but continued to push when he could see properly and moved up the order to a fine 2nd place championship finish.
A further 3 places behind after the final stage was Craig Pennington. He was running his Evo 9 version of a Mitsubishi and was on the pace start from the off and completed day 1 in 7th place. He maintained that speed and position despite fighting with a dodgy diff that kept him on his toes for the rest of the event. This all became academic when he was awarded a 5 minute penalty for early arrival at stage 20.
In fourth place for the championship, were the father and son pairing of Michael and Josh Davison. The crew from Tynemouth MC don’t make many appearances together in their Proton Satria so it was good to see them feature on the rally. Their only problem was a shattered nearside window after they came too close to a chicane. A temporary fix with some polythene kept them ‘watertight’ for the rest of the day and got them to the end of the rally in 20th place. Just 2 seconds further back after 75 competitive miles were Stephen Bethwaite / Ann Forster in their Vauxhall Nova – they struggled with no starter on Saturday and were glad of a few marshal’s assistance when they drowned their engine in one of Weeton’s puddles. A quick dose of WD40 later, a push start and they’re back in the rally, albeit with iffy steering and lots of water in the car. Still they made it back to the Norbreck Castle and a hat trick of class wins on this rally. Geoff Simpson and Mick Johnson finished 6th for the championship with a mainly trouble free drive – that is apart from the barrel that jumped out from one of the Promenade chicanes and damaged the Mitsubishi Evo X front panel and wing ! Richard and Andy Barnard were next up in their Subaru Impreza. Making their debut in the series, the son and father from Cockermouth settled in with a steady run and were happy with some good points. And our last scorers were the Spadeadam crew of Nigel Hepburn and James McWhir. Having just taken delivery of the Peugeot 206, the first drive of the car was over the start ramp so they were delighted just to record a finish.
So what happened to some of our other runners and riders in the atrocious weather conditions ? Chris Myers / Matt Whattam were charging along in 17th place when the turbo expired on the Evo 9 after stage 11; Paul Swift suffered in the darkness of Friday night with alternator problems and after 4 stages he was in 88th place. A string of top ten times on Saturday moved him up the order to 57th before he stopped in the mud on stage 17; Peppe Planeta didn’t make around the first stage after attacking too hard and coming off second best to one of Weeton’s kerbs; Duncan Wardrop and Ian Crosbie were going well in 9th place overall when the management warning light starting illuminating on the last Promenade stages and they never made it to the final loop of stages; Mark and Matt Thompson changed rear shockers on Saturday but the driver still felt he wasn’t in control of the car and he stopped on the final stage along with Barrie Thomson / Jerry Hettrick. The Carlisle team suffered with an oil leak on Saturday afternoon but were ‘topping up’ between stages and although a new oil cooler at final service helped, they lost out just before the finish when lying 20th overall; Paul Dolan / Derrick Fawcett struggled from the off and eventually retired after stage 14 with mechanical woes. It’s rare to report that we had more retirements than finishers on the rally but that just confirms how testing the event is.
And so with the first 3 rounds of the series run, we have Chris Grieve still leading the driver’s championship from Alistair Hutchinson, Paul Swift, Craig Pennington and Barry Lindsay. There’s only 4 points separating these guys while across in the co-driver’s section Ann Forster already has a 10 points lead over Paul Makepeace with St John Dykes, David Cox and then Michael Lindsay close behind.
Congratulations to Motor Sport (North West) Ltd for putting together a fantastic show over the whole rally weekend. The Legend Fires North West Stages is always a real, nonstop challenge for competitors with it’s stages run in many different conditions. This year the organisers had to cope with the very adverse weather conditions as well as many road works that affected the link sections between the 24 planned stages. Amazingly, every stage ran and mostly on time too !
There’s now a 7 week break before the next scheduled round of the championship which is the Ingliston Stages. This is planned for Saturday 26th March and the location is the usual old race track next to Edinburgh Airport. Dunfermline Car Club are the organisers of the rally but as most of you reading this will be aware, the club are at a crossroads and considering their future direction. An extra ordinary meeting of the members will decide the next steps and once more details are available, we’ll have an official update to keep you all in the picture.