HOW WE WON THE STAR
- (or rude noises from the hot seat).
by John Brown.
Don't blame me for this drivel; blame your worthy Editor. He wrote me a syrupy letter of such heart-rending appeal that I felt bound either to send a rude reply or to write something as requested. (Well - these lads think its their due to be flattered - Ed.). In the end I decided on this compromise. Actually, it was the name of the magazine that clinched the deal; it's what I spend most of my time under; the view's so much more reassuring.
Seriously, people keep saying to me, “Doesn't Colin frighten you?" The answer is, NO - except occasionally when he frightens himself even more. Like on Dovey 2 on the Star, about a mile from the finish, where there is a wide sweeping right-hander that tighten up unexpectedly, with a ball-bearing surface cunningly cambered towards the drop on the left. Colin is in my opinion the finest driver by MILES on British club and national rallies today; in fact, he's nearly as good as I would be, and for any navigator that's really saying SOMETHING. Seriously (why do I keep saying that?) you only have to look at his times on the stages and selectives to see the difference, bearing in mind that in the Imp we have only about 95bhp, perhaps 100 but I doubt it, as against an Escort TC's easy 140 -150 for a good 'un. And while the Imp is light, Colin and I aren't. We both weigh knocking on 14 stone - a bit more when we're not knocking on.
But this is supposed to be about the Star, so let's get on with it. Colin and, I wanted to win this event more than any other, but we were sure we wouldn't. To start with, we'd had too long a run of luck already for it to last; secondly, poor little JVC 123E was getting very tired, although well looked after between events. After all, she's had a shunt on the Circuit this year (Andy Cowan up) and has finished both the Scottish (with us) and the Gulf (with Andy), as well as doing a half-season's MN events after she came into Colin's hands; and Colin drives to win which means you are hammering the car pretty hard, particularly when my flat-lefts turn out as hairpin-rights (SO sorry, Colin thump!).
But as usual we went to do well, and we had a go right from the start. The first selective suited an Imp for the first few miles, particularly the Belan loop which was very muddy, but the last part was very fast although wet - Eppynt-like, in fact and I expected times to be close. I was very surprised when we caught Fidler and crossed the finish line right on his tail. We cleaned this one, along with Alun Rees and John Bloxham.
We were clean - along with 12 others - through the first batch of road sections, which were pretty fast, and also on the Happy Valley selective, which on a wet night looked pretty miserable to me. Then came the little selectives just after Towyn, and we had two incidents; on the first one we went off into a ditch on a very nasty muddy right-hander which was later to snare a number of people, and stuck with the engine dead. The Imp came out again without a push, but it must have cost us quite a few seconds, and I was astonished when in the end only Roy Fidler beat us here. This was where we collected that very nice modification to the side of the Imp - MY side, needless to say. Then, on the second of these two stages we ran over one of a heap of stones that had fallen from a collapsed wall and punctured a front tyre immediately. We finished the stage on the flat, and were relieved to find that the timing was easy and we had still cleaned it.
This was the halfway point of the night section, and comparing notes with the other lads we found that, much to our surprise, we were actually in the lead, having beaten all but Roy on the SS where we had lost time, while he had dropped some on SS1 as well.
Then came another blow at Arthog, SS5. We followed Roy through by one minute and Colin near the end seemed to think we were catching him. Spectators later bore this out, tool but we were given a time about half-a-minute slower. I check start and finish clocks at every stage, and also time us through with a stopwatch, so I knew our time was about as given. Barry Hughes, Roy's navigator, at first said they'd been given the correct time too, but he later admitted that there might be some mistaken. Anyway, times given must stand, and I couldn't really grumble as I'm pretty sure that a marshal on the Vales the week before had given us a time one minute in our favour, this being more than our winning margin! But at the time Colin was very dispirited, and we set off into the series of time controls round Dolgellau knowing we were now about 20 secs. adrift from Roy. Colin was determined to catch Roy, and set off going like a dingbat, but we couldn't even get a sniff at him. We were starting to drop minutes here and there on the road, too, so at one control where we had just a little time in hand we asked what time Roy had gone through at. Imagine our surprise and delight when we heard we were the first car through (Colin immediately accused me of missing a control, needless to say). It transpired Roy had had a wrong slot - a mental aberration on Barry's part as he actually knows that road pretty well - and had seen us whip past the end while he was reversing out. So we were back in the lead again, which is always a bit tense, particularly when there's still a very long way to go.
What's more, Roy wasn't making up time, preferring to let us run first on the road so as to have to wake up the marshals. This is normally a very real handicap, as they often seem ill-briefed and you have to tell them what to do, or else they are not expecting you, or even as happened on one nameless event this year, actually asleep. Fortunately, though, this was the Express and Star, and the marshals were nearly all ready and well-briefed. Even on an event like this you get the odd exception, but the general standard of marshalling was very high. We only got one marshal who actually asked us if we were a competitor! One small moan here, though, about the clocks: we were cleaning some difficult sections, then losing two minutes on the next. It is a pity that rallies these days have to use cheap clocks for time controls, but as an organizer I realise myself that since Smiths stopped their hire service the price of hiring enough really good clocks has become prohibitive, even if you can find them. It would be a good idea if the major rally organisers could get together to sort this one out perhaps conning someone like Uncle Castrol into buying a few dozen, to be used over the year.
Anyway, I digress. After that wrong slot, we rejoin our heroes at Barmouth for a breakfast that, while not Claridge's was definitely one up on the inedible pink little sausages, sliver of bacon, greasy egg and watery tinned tomatoe that seems to have become hoteliers' idea of the rally-driver's favorite food. I pride myself on being a bit of a gormet, not to mention liking good nosh, so I feel strongly on this point.
Here we learned we had hoisted ourselves into a reasonable lead, and tactics of the day were obviously, going to call for a bit of soft pedal. Malkin responded to this suggestion in the usual way by agreeing to it and then proceeding to set up fastest time on every remaining stage except the last one.
And so the day went by very enjoyably, the sun even coming out for a while, as we belted round the various stages We were very unhappy about the daylight selectives on public roads, particularly when on one we were made to put our crashhats on, and I don't think these are at all a good idea. Richard Harper explained to me - afterwards - that full precautions had been taken not to let non-competitors on the roads but they ARE public, and there is never any certainty that someone won't insist on his rights as a citizen and just drive up All right, I KNOW we didn't meet anyone, and I KNOW that you do get non-competitors driving around on special stages in the forests, but at least on private land we have a right to be charging round like lunatics with crashhats on, and if we do hit anyone it's their fault; but would the courts see it that way on a public road section? Sorry, I just DON'T like the idea, and nor does Colin.
Anyway, grumble over, and the day wore tranquilly on with the odd hairy moment on a stage to brighten our day. The scenery was fabulous', and it was very pleasant to drive around in daylight over those superb mountain roads with time to stop and look The Dam stage was very entertaining, as you can see the whole stage from across the valley after the finish, and we congregated to watch the fun, time and jeer at the others and tell lies. Very pleasant and relaxing, I had one short period round about here when I got a bit tired. I failed to plot a via reference, as well as having a couple of wrong slots, and at the lunch halt word went round that we had missed a secret check. We got very worried about this, and I hunted out Richard Harper to check; fortunately, he assured me that all was well, but by this time my rating in the navigators' popularity charts with a certain rally-driver had sunk to just about zero.
Still, we plodded (?) on, having a splendid time in Dovey and enjoying the remaining stages, although being in the lead was becoming an increasing burden as the end came nearer, for you can t count on winning until you have the pot in your hot little hand. Anyway, it all came to an end with a fabulous party at which I flaked out, tired, and perhaps a little boozed. (He was PARALYTIC - CM).
We didn't get round to saying at the prizegiving what a wonderful event it had been; well, it was, so take it as said. We must thank all concerned - the marshals, the organisers and the sponsers for putting on an excellent rally that is easily the best so far this year. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I hope it will be a runner-up in the 1968 Rally of the Year contest. I won't say what I hope will win, but let me just take this opportunity to remind members that they are invited to the Targa Rusticana on 7/8 December (and even the Star uses Targa Timing.)