Trackrod Rally September 2024

After our failed attempt at the Trackrod in 2023, Neil still had that Dalby Stage itch to scratch and secured a favourable deal with WB Motorsport to use their recently acquired MSport built Fiesta R2 on this year’s Trackrod Forest Stages on the 28th September 2024.

So after booking accommodation and practicing the notes a fair few times during the weeks before, it was off to Filey to meet up with Neil and Ben from WB who was also looking after two other Mini’s in the Mini Challenge part of the event.

Neil had already done a test in the Fiesta at Bob Ceen’s place near Denbigh on the Wednesday before the rally but I could not get there due to work issues. Ben had therefore adjusted the seat, belts and steering column etc for Neil and all that remained was to adjust the belts for me when I first sat in the car on Friday afternoon. I must admit the seat was very deep and tight which together with the extensive safety cage made it somewhat difficult for me to get out of the car. But there was a lot more room in front of me than in a Mini. It also had a working heated windscreen, heater, electric windows and aircon; luxury !!. The speedometer also worked and it had a working MSport Trip Meter which I could not get the hang of so reverted to the one on my phone.

It was very windy with rain showers on Filey Brigg Country Park and the car passed its noise check easily and then we joined the obligatory Trackrod long queue for Scrutineering. I don’t know why they don’t have a separate line and scrutineers for the Friday night competitors. They do issue scrutineering times to competitors but as we all know these are generally ignored unlike Belgium where they would tell you to go away and come back on your due time. They were also allowing competitors to fix things that were found wrong in the scrutineering tent. I presume this was because time was marching on towards the start time on Filey prom.

Had a few chats with other Dukeries members (Stephen Moyses, Dave Simmons, Chris Langthorne, Neil Marshal) while waiting in the queue and after getting through scrutineering with no issues at all, we retired to our accommodation, went out for some food and then went through the notes and videos before getting some kip.
Our due start time on Saturday was 08:52 from NY500 at Pickering which meant it was another early alarm call to give us sufficient time to get prepared and off to Pickering. Driving the 24 mile road section out to Pickering made us realise how noisy the car was inside making it difficult for Neil to hear what I was saying when telling him where to go. It would have been better to have road section intercoms but too late now.

We had to deal with a re-route out to Pickering because of road closures caused by flooding but the weather on Saturday was much better with bright sun shine and no wind. We just hoped that the previous days weather had not damaged the stages too much.

We were seventh car on the road this time and the first stage for us was the 9.29 miles Stage 2 of Cropton. Stage 1 was the Dalby stage that ran on the proceeding Friday night as part of the Trackrod Rally Yorkshire and included the Historics, Land Rovers and Mini Challenge competitors.

The car was superb on the first stage with a great amount of power that pulled out of the corners so much better than the Mini’s we had used previously. The sequential flat shift gear box also made the car very easy to drive on the stages and the suspension made it very stable which gave Neil much more confidence in where to place the car on the road. My note calling was a little rusty but we had no major moments and met the friendly face of Tony Jones on the

Stop Line who explained the usual Cropton issue of no coms between him and the flying finish so he just gave me a time to enable me to work out my due time at Stage 3.

After a short 3 mile road section, Stage 3 was 6.25 miles in Gale Rigg. My note calling was a bit better on this stage and we were going well until we came across spectators prior to a 3 left waving to slow us down where we then saw the Car 84 Saab of Stephen Higgins very badly damaged and facing the wrong way on the right hand side of the road. We slowed to a stop and saw Stephen and his codriver out of the car and holding up the OK board. He gave us the thumbs up so we sped back up and carried on. Nearing the end of the stage, we were approaching a 5 left prior to Post 14 when again we came across spectators waving to slow us down and we then saw the Car 83 Mk 2 Escort of Alan Young on its roof 90 degrees to the road and partially blocking the road. Again we slowed to a stop and saw Alan and his codriver out of the car and holding up the OK board. He gave us the thumbs up so we sped back up and carried on. I feel without the two stops we would have had a good time in Gale Rigg but its better to check those competitors were OK because both accidents looked like they were big ones.

The 5.87 mile of Stage 4 Staindale followed a 24 mile road section back through Pickering to Allerston were we turned left at the Cayley Arms and then a 5.50mile section up a white to get back into the forest. They gave us 50 minutes to do this road section at an average of 25mph. With the effects of the traffic in Pickering and the spectator traffic on the narrow rough white we struggled to achieve this and ended up dropping 5 minutes into our lateness.
Staindale was the only stage that had suffered some weather damage as we had to sign for a marshals warning at the stage start for a big hole that had opened up on a downhill section to a hairpin right at Post 11. There had been a lot of harvesting in this area prior to the rally so the heavy machinery had obviously soften up the stage surface in places.

We got through Staindale with no issues at all and set off on the 21 mile road section to Service back at Filey Brigg Country Park where it was good to get out of the car and stretch my legs for a bit as I had started to lose the feeling from my hips down.

After a spanner check and re-fuel during the allowed 30 minutes we squeezed ourselves back into the Fiesta and set off to the out control. We were little bit later than I wanted but we drove past the yellow board at bang on the time I wanted. There was only one marshal on the out control and she was chatting with the crew of car 80 so when I asked for the time we wanted she looked at the clock and saw it had clicked over to the next minute by a few seconds so she insisted that was the time she was giving me effectively causing me to book out of service a minute late. We then drove 10 yards to the holding control where we stood for all of 2 minutes before setting off on the 23 mile road section to 13.23 mile of Stage 5 Dalby.

Weirdly we had 10 minutes more to travel only 2 mile further on the way back to the forests.

Dalby has always been a bucket list stage for Neil for a long while and I must admit it did not disappoint. I thought it was never going to end and started to run out of spit reading the 16 pages of notes. We did get caught about three quarters of the way through; first by Keith Turner and Rob Brook in their Historic Mk 2 Escort Car 173 and pulled off out of way at a suitable point and then by the Car 172 Porche 911 of Thomas Bell nearer to the end of the stage so we pulled out of way again to let them through. Interestingly only one of those thanked us at the end of the rally. I leave you to guess who.

We thought this stage would be a rough bearing in mind it was used on the Friday night but it wasn’t too bad. Even though I made a fair few errors in reading the notes we thoroughly enjoyed the stage.

After a quick trip into Adderston Field to hand over the time card at the PC, we were then off to tackle the 10.05mile of Stage 6 Langdale. No real issues on this stage and we gave ourselves a pat on the back for completing all the stages this time. At the stop line, we were handed a 3 page re-route document due to further road closures caused by flooding and we then we set off back to the finish at Filey with a feeling of achievement.

We had to visit an interim TC at Irton to hand in our tracking device before getting to the final TC on Filey Promenade bang on our due time. There was a lot of spectators here and we were interviewed by Motorsport News correspondent but we were not allowed to go through the finish arch because we hadn’t won anything. We did actually finish third in Class B10 but because there was only 3 finishers in this class, they only awarded first and second (cheapskates !). In the end, the penalty for booking out of service late did not show up on the results so happy with that.
The event was well organised and managed but the lack of Rally HQ at the Country Park makes it difficult to query anything. They did have three CLO’s but I did not see any of them at the service area. Didn’t really notice if all the junctions were marshalled in the stages. I was a bit too busy, but it was good that they had marshals checking you were going the right way on the re-routes.

All in all a great day but my ears are still ringing from the noise of that car ! How can a car be more noisy inside than it is outside ?.

 

Bob Draper