McLachlan Rallying

Northern Lights Road Rally 1997

Leeds University MC - 1st/2nd March

Result - 1st Overall

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I was roped into doing this event by Eddie (it's normally the other way round) as he was the comp-sec for Northern Universities MC who were involved in the running of the event. It was the road-rally part of the ‘National Students’ championship, although anybody could enter the road rally and many old ANCC friends had.

A forty strong entry (bolstered by the visiting students) was promising, and the atmosphere at the start was friendly. I had already been unnerved by the smoke appearing from the back of the car on the way to the start, but shortly before arriving, a nasty mechanical vibration had started at certain engine revs. Suspecting the ancient rear axle, I checked over all the important bolts and fluid levels before rattling into scrutineering.

LUMC had employed the services of an official RAC scrutineer who was taking great delight in pulling the students cars to pieces. The regular road rally crews who had entered were smirking at the sight of many student minis etc. having various stickers (and paint) peeled off in order to comply with the no advertising rules.

The first few sections were relatively easy, although the sight of codeboards on the wrong side of the road spelled out what was to come. Plenty of spectators from the local universities were out on the first few sections with every SGW being manned. At least the marshalling of the event should have been OK. The event was run on an envelope system, but the organizers had made the mistake of using see-through envelopes, giving cars fitted with f fluorescent tubes a distinct advantage!

About halfway through the first half, the rain started in earnest. Soon many of the tiny Yorkshire lanes were flooded. Fortunately, I’d just fitted an electronic ignition and sealed the electrics. I ploughed through the floods with no difficulty although many crews gained a lot of lateness while standing in a flood with a can of WD40. Codeboards counted as 15 mins penalty and this was to be the unfortunate deciding factor in the rally.

The route was fairly easy to clean with many sections being straight down main(ish) roads. However, the very wet nature of the event made it more fun for the driver. At half way the rally was running fairly smoothly, with only complaints about the size and location of the codeboards being of cause for concern.

The second half however went downhill somewhat. The student marshals had got wet during the first half and gone home leaving many time controls unmanned. If anything other than an envelope system had been employed, the rally would have had to be abandoned due to lack of route information..

The stormy nature of the night had blown down various flimsy codeboards, and although no ‘backwards facing’ codeboards had been promised, a number of codeboards had been placed sideways making them almost impossible to spot. The navigators had a very hard time of it, and one or two top crews gave up and just headed for the finish. A section of contour lines caught many crews out causing additional lateness. We decided that we weren't doing too badly and that we'd battle through the problems in the hope of a good result.

Results at the end were not forthcoming, as the organizers were having a headache trying to work out what to do about all the missing time controls and codeboards i.e. which sections counted, what lateness could be imposed against competitors when controls had been msissing etc. Postal results were gained later in the week, giving myself the win on 0F 63m with the other ANCC crews close behind. It was worth the effort after all!

The event was advertised as being a drivers and navigators event with time consuming but un-cryptic navigation. The navigation almost worked, and was not particularly difficult. If it had all worked properly, this would have been a well organized part of the event. The route chosen wasn't so good with many challenging roads being neutral, and then easy roads being competitive, but then maybe there were PR issues that caused this. The lack of marshals in the second half was the main problem though and the codeboard positioning issue didn't help either. Some lessons to be learnt if the organisers plan on running another event.

The gearbox expired on the way home due to a broken extension housing - we were lucky to finish at all.