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COMPOST
The road rallying season which never really ends has kicked off again with the Kent Rally, our own event on Feb 17th/18th. At one stage, Chin had only received 14 entries which was depressing but on the night we had 26 crews out which was more than last year. In days gone by I'm told (too young to remember!), road rallies attracted fields of 120. Even if by some miracle we could once again get that many, imagine the PR problems. These hoighty toighty types who 'moved to the country to get away from the horrid motor car' would probably keel over upon reading the PR letter, mmmm! I'm afraid that in the populous South East, one can never get away from the motor car, can one, besides, how does one get about then? Getting back to the event, the winners with no fails and 2 minutes were Ian Orford and Peter Barnard from the CSMA and Torbay MC respectively driving a Mazda 323 4x4 Turbo. These were followed by Steve Cole / Bob Blows of Guildford in a 205 GTi who were on for the win until TC42 where they lost 7 minutes. Looking further down the results, Steve Hodgson and Steve Bubb in car 13 finished 7th overall even though they lost only 2 minutes. The 6th placed crew had lost 36 minutes, how can this be, I hear you ask. Sixth place had no fails (missed codeboards, wrong direction approaches or opened envelopes) whereas the two Steve's had 1 fail. It goes to show that driving the correct route and writing down all the correct codeboards is more important than losing time. The Lydden Sprint is just around the corner and may have even happened by now. I'm sure it will be a success as it always is. One thing to comment on though, regular competitors at Lydden will probably have noticed that the entry fee has gone up to £85 from £75 last year, a considerable increase and one that may well draw a few comments in the paddock. This is because Lydden, who used to charge us a discounted rate for a Sunday event as we can only use the circuit from midday, don't anymore. Circuit hire has therefore gone up from £2200 + VAT to £3600 + VAT. On a 100 competitor field this works out at about £17 extra per comp in order to remain with the same margins as last year, assuming everything else stays at the same price. From this you can see that we should really be charging £92 for this year! We felt however that at that price, we may well not get a full entry and we only need to be 10 entries short to loose a potential £920. So we compromised and went for £85. Whilst on the subject of Lydden, SEMSEC have a test day planned at the circuit for Saturday 24th March. This will cost £99 for a full day with cars split into groups of similar performance and each group is anticipated to get six 15 minutes sessions throughout the day. Competition licences are needed as are everything else you would need to get a car through scrutineering. Contact Ken Greenfield on 01892 655978 for an entry form. I mentioned scrutineering in that last paragraph and this next bit will concern all those that run a car that doesn't currently have a roll cage fitted. After reading Keith Lays' Wessex Tales last month, I as well as others out there became concerned at the rule that has appeared in the Blue Book without any notice regarding roll cage requirements. I thought I'd better read it myself. At the start of section L.C Technical, or page 181, in a dark shading it says,' In addition to complying with E12, all vehicles competing an Sprints, Hill Climbs or Drag Races must comply with the following as appropriate:' Moving overpage to 182 and rule 10.11.1, another shaded rule which indicates that this is a new rule says, 'Roll-over safety bars Q1 except for cars of periods A to E or complying with an approved formula.' Forget periods A to E for a moment and read on to rule 10.11.1.(a) which says 'Production cars with standard bodies Q1.5.1 recommended.' These two rules sitting next to each other seem in my mind to contradict each other, which after speaking to Keith about those that are responsible for these rules, comes as no surprise! Periods A to E define the age of a vehicle, see page 241/242 and in this case means up to 31/12/1961 or a year earlier for single seater and two seater racing cars. Clearly that age doesn't encompass the vast majority of our regular speed competitors. So with this contradiction in mind, I asked Keith, who incidentally isn't an MSA person, just someone who knows more about the rules than those who write them, who I could speak to in the MSA to get clarification. 'You'll get nowhere there' was the shortened version of his answer deleting the expletives. So I thought that the best person to talk to would be one of the senior scrutineers, Colin Barnett who is also listed in the Blue Book as a Technical Commissioner. He felt that this new rule was introduced to 'tidy up the differences with the period cars' and not one that would affect thousands of 'standard car' competitors. He said that at all of the meetings he had attended recently, this rule has never been brought up as something that was going to cause major problems. He will look into it and come back to me if there are likely to be any repercussions. In a nutshell, don't panic …. yet! This may well come too late for the Lydden Sprint and I feel that this will be one of those times where you have to suck it and see. Incidentally, Colin Barnett will be the senior scrutineer at the Lydden meeting. Having said all that, I tend to agree with Keith in that you really ought to consider fitting at least a rear cage if you're competing regularly. We humans tend to be brittle and 'Motorsport is Dangerous'. Moving on from speed events to 12cars and scatters. Our own last two of these events have more than likely happened by now (Sorry they haven't - Foot and Mouth!! -ED). As ever, these events have been great fun if a little underwhelmed by entries. My thoughts last month relating to scatter entries has at the time of writing this been acted upon by at least one new bod. Big Jim Giddings said at the Feb social night that he would come out and have a go. As long as he can make it back from Newport in time, I will be navigating him around the pubs, sorry lanes of North Kent on Feb 28th. Silly comment that, I know that Jim would be miles better at navigating me around the pubs! Hopefully a few others will have taken up my offer, I will report next month. Sutton and Cheam Motor Club are running the Mini Tempest Stages on April 8th at Longcross, Chobham and are asking for help from anyone interested in marshalling. It is a round of the Rally 2001 and LCAMC Championships and the only way to get into the venue is to either enter or sign on as a marshal. Phone James Sunderland to offer your help. Did anyone notice in last months ACORN, the picture of John Hewat, our without portfolio committee member taken at the Dinner Dance. Go and get it now, and look in the top left area of the picture at the lady sitting at John's table. Did she know there was a camera pointing her way? or is she just asking for a two glasses? I can't make out from the picture who she is, and I hope I haven't offended anyone who wife this must be. It was just asking to be pointed out, twice! Shows you how sad I am looking at the mag so thoroughly. (No, it shows you know a good thing when you see it - ED!) As hinted at in January ACORN, I am now the owner of a house in Surrey. The place needs quite a bit doing to it and as my parents aren't in any great hurry to kick me out, I shall still be there for some time yet, so don't start phoning the new number for a while. Once moved in, my details in the magazine will be changed. Mark Dawson |
