To kick off as I did last month, this may well be your last opportunity to offer your services as a marshal on the Rally of Kent on March 16th. Sevenoaks are responsible for the running of the stages in Hemsted Forest and Iain Gibson is Stage Commander. He’s the man who’ll be needing to hear from you. Please call him on 01474 873573. We will also be setting up the stage on the Saturday so if you’re available then as well as or instead of the Sunday, then we’ll be grateful for your attendance.
The speed season is very nearly upon us and no doubt all your Winter mods will have been completed by now!! Don’t forget your competition licence, if you leave it until a week before the first event, you almost certainly won’t have it to present at signing on which believe me can cause problems and potentially an extra cost to you the competitor of £30 imposed not by the organising club but the MSA. Oh, and don’t forget to stick a photo to it! ….. sounds obvious, but it has been done, or rather not done! Now is also the time to register for any championships you may be doing. As I said last month, it is also a way of getting onto the regs mailing lists and you therefore stand less chance of being put onto the reserve list or worse. Details of who to contact are in last month’s COMPOST but if in doubt give me a call and I’ll put you straight.
New venues. We are looking at a potential new sprint venue near Braintree, Essex. It is apparently an old airfield of which part of the perimeter track still exists. I say apparently because at the time of writing I haven’t seen it. It may be too rough and bumpy for sprint cars but we’ll wait and see. We also have another couple of possibilities on the horizon, to early to say anything more than that, but rest assured that your committee is on the lookout. We don’t want to be the club that runs sprints only at North Weald. More next month.
The scatter and 12car season will have just finished by now with the usual lower turnout on scatters compared to 12cars. The latter are probably more popular to those that want to go on to compete on road rallies as they are in themselves, mini versions of a road rally. Getting used to the timing, TC formalities and so on is useful before stepping up to road rallies. Scatters are possibly a bit more fun, less competitive????, I think not! Roger Sawyers has pointed out quite rightly that our scatters compete for entries against Maidstone’s, with sometimes only a few days between them. Regulars will know that for the 12cars, Croydon, Boro18 and ourselves have combined to form a 12car championship, which Croydon administer. This undoubtedly puts less strain on each club to find an organiser for every round as it’s shared out nicely. Also competitors from the 3 clubs and others inevitably enter all 3 clubs events. This is clearly beneficial to all and as such, I will be talking to Maidstone later in the year to see if we can do something along the same lines for the scatters. This combined with a more friendly night,   i.e, one that doesn’t clash with other clubs activities should prove fruitful. Time will tell.
At the beginning of February, Daren Hall and Andy Elcomb began their assault on the BTRDA Silver Star Forest Rally Championship. We set off for Chepstow Racecourse and the Wyedean Rally on Friday 7th for scrutineering. It’s been a while since Daren’s done anything and so a new lid was required. Snell SA90 is no longer a valid standard. Otherwise, scrutineering was uneventful, just as you want it to be. That evening, the car gained some stickers, still plenty of space for advertising though! The next day we set off to Chepstow, which was Rally HQ and service. A bit crowded and difficult to manoeuvre with no one-way system in operation. Not a lot to do other than empty the rally car of bags, which were transferred to the Range Rover management car. Make sure there’s enough fuel and off to the start of SS1. As Daren and Andy made their way, I left for fuel and to make the 45 minute or so trip to the first management point, which was to be after SS3. There had been a hold up early on which I didn’t know about and left me wondering what to do when they hadn’t arrived even after 30 minutes had elapsed past their expected time. A walk down to the road indicated that there was nothing to be concerned about. Lower numbered cars were still arriving at the management point so just sit back and wait. When they did arrive, nothing was required, Daren commented on the lack of traction and Andy felt the car was hopping about too much. It’s early days and these things can be improved in the suspension setup. Drive back to Chepstow for service and a bite to eat. The Nissan arrived with driver shaking his head! They had hit a hole, a big hole that resulted in a bent track rod and a cracked windscreen and later on in the event, two suspension top mounts fell apart probably caused by the same hole. A bit of levering on the track rod straightened it back sufficiently, nothing we could do about the screen although it only had one small crack in it anyway. SS6 was a rerun of SS1 in the grounds of the racecourse. This time I had the time to stay and watch them here. The car sounds mean, real F2 stuff and it was nice to see Daren on the handbrake at the end of a fast tarmac straight going right onto gravel. Most of the 4WD’s are just boring to watch here. Their quick times come purely from the traction available out of these bends. A little more finesse and maintaining of momentum is required in 2WD. Time to set off for the second management point. Again nothing required from me at this point, but now the car didn’t want to stay in gear. 3rd and 4th were proving problematic; Andy sometimes had to hold it in gear so Daren could have both hands on the wheel. The final stage, SS10 followed management and it was on the way back to Chepstow so I was able to stop at the side of the road and dart off into the forest to see them through. Despite now having lost 4th altogether, they still appeared on the pace even though the 5th gear engine note gave the impression that they were coasting. We met up on the road at the end of the stage to drive back to Chepstow together. The car had survived, so had Daren and Andy and much to Daren’s amazement, they had picked up a class A7 win to boot. All in all a good start to a long season and an indication of improvements required to be made to the car and setup. Unless you can afford to go testing or have built the car yourself, you’re inevitably going to find faults with it. Part and parcel of motorsport but we know which direction we want to be heading in.

Mark Dawson