Starting out from its traditional base at the Farmers' Mart on the outskirts of town on the Denbigh road, there was a buzz about the place, despite the persistent heavy drizzle. Its a strange place in some ways, for example the background whiff of slurry as you buy your cuppa in the cafe and the petrol station next door that's distinctly shut, despite the pretty much guaranteed business. Last year speccie info was thin on the ground, but this year there were plenty of copes (at £2) which included a full entry list. Met up with a fellow ASOC club member and we talked about how his Sunbeam road rally car was progressing - a little more welding to be done on the jacking points and strengthing and it will be ready for paint. They're marshalling one of the earliest passage controls, so they're away fairly early on.
Once the route cards were issued to the competitors, the competitive cars are effectively in "parc ferme" - no one is allowed in but the competitors. This isn't something you see often in road rallying (everyone I spoke to about this hasn't seen this anywhere else) so maybe there's been some mis-behaviour amongst competitors in the past? Before the lock-out I managed to have a chat with the navigator of car 23 - a black and silver Talbot Sunbeam Lotus. It looks pretty good with some obviously "recreated" badging rather than the originals, but the shell looks good and its well kitted out for its road rally role. HKV 103V is no longer a Lotus - its fitted with a Vauxhall 2 litre red top (of 80s / 90s Astra GTE and Cavalier SRi origins) running fuel injection. This is a reasonably popular approach and gives good reliable power at relatively low cost. The rest of the field is the usual mix of Escorts, 205s, Novas, Ibizas, Astras etc. A few Scoobs too. Lots of cars are wearing pretty chunky rubber boots - looking more like gravel tyres than road rally tyres.
Using the speccie info I headed out to the first point that looked interesting - at 23:50 a slot right off a B road into a wide yellow - just over a crest so a bit tricky to spot. Road was wet and a few light showers. Getting colder, but no snow like last year. The organisers had put out an orange arrow to indicate the junction, which is another aspect I'm not used to on road rallies - I'm guessing that plotting this junction on a map isn't one of the challenges of the night. This was very close to another slot right from the same B road onto a yellow at which I've spectated in the past - so it was possible to walk between both points but I spent most time at the new point, catching the Sunbeam at both junctions. At one they went down the grass verge on the exit of the corner, but recovered OK. The junction is shown in the centre of this satellite view with cars approaching from WSW and departing S:
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So a vew bits of sideways action here, and some semi-spins but only an handful of speccies which was a shame as it was better to watch than it looked at first glance. On the way to the next speccie point I passed through Ruthin to find the petrol station next to the start venue open and the top 3 cars taking on fuel before they headed into the mart to collect the second half of the route. Stopped a while and took a few piccies.
(click to enlarge photos)
2 Sunbeams Meet In The Dark
The next speccie point was right next to the A55, which was a bit wierd - 3 lanes of trucks thundering past as it seemed that one of the Anglesey ferries had turned out an hour or so earlier on one side - and road rally cars slotting off a wide yellow into an uphill narrow yellow which was a bit more than a 90 right, on the other side:
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Watched a few go through here with lots of sideways action on the still wet roads. The Sunbeam over cooked it a bit and ended up doing a bit of a 3 point turn:
You can see the results here, where the Sunbeam finished 17th overall, which must be the highest result for a Sunbeam in a long, long while.
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