KENT RALLY 2001 17/18^TH February 2001

Starting near Charing and finishing near Maidstone the tight and twisty route included less than a mile of white road but many of the yellow roads were muddy and damp. Despite a threat of fog and ice the night was relatively kind to the competitors with the result decided by the classic hairpins in Queen Down Warren, the winners, Ian Orford and Peter Barnard, dropping a minute on each of these two sections and the leading Semi-Experts and third overall, Alan Sayers and Bob Stokoe were only caught out by these sections. The 2000 champions Steve Cole and Bob Blows cleaned this section but dropped an uncharacteristic 7 minutes on an off route excursion later on.
The majority of crews had difficulty in finding the narrow slots in several places which was aggravated by the amount of mud left by the recent floods. First of the experts, Doug Kingsley and Ben Greenfield, suffered from mechanical problems following a rushed engine rebuild during the preceding week, but their local knowledge kept them in fourth place.
With very straightforward navigation most of the novice competitors had a good night out with John and Paul Stevens end up as class winners.
The Clubman event saw some beginners getting some useful experience of a night event with the blow softened by rejoining after petrol missing out the first sections of the second half with the Clerk of the Course helping them get the remainder of the rally on the map.

Chin

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