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Event Reports
Left: Vintageant Category winners Tony Covill and Paul Bloxidge - Bentley MkVI Special.
The 16th Winter Challenge started on Sunday morning from the International Historic Motorsport Show at Stoneleigh. The cars were flagged away under a clear blue sky by ex-works driver Timo Makinen, assisted greatly by his former co-driver Paul Easter, Timo denying his advancing years by making his way to the co-drivers side when it was occupied by a lady co-driver!
The Classic Rally Association were in celebratory mood too as the previous evening they had been awarded the International Historic Motorsport Show “Road Rally” of the year award for the 16th Classic Marathon – The Viking Classic.
The massive crowd were entertained by Tony Mason, doing his best to spread the word about historic rallying. Immediately after the start the crews completed their first test section at the show – fastest car on this test was the Austin-Healey 3000 of the Humphrey Brothers. The test was a good crowd pleaser and set the crews up for a pleasant drive through the lanes of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to the final UK control in Stony Stratford. Hosts of the final control, The Crown Inn and David Odell of the Chamber of Commerce had wound up the publicity machine and the cold weather did not dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm.
Winners of the Best UK performance award were Terry Pickering and Anthony Preston, first timers on a CRA event but very experienced competitors they had a zero score on the driving test by being fastest car in their class and also had no penalties from the two regularity sections.
Car problems at this early stage in an event are quite common and before the event was underway the mechanical assistance crew of Peter and Betty Banham had been busy curing faults. However, a major gearbox failure in the MGA of John and Pauline Dignan could easily have led to their retirement but one of the rally officials towed them to the Tunbridge Wells garage premises, owned by our Results guru. Their luck held and after some midnight oil was burned and the gearbox was replaced they reached Le Touquet in time for the Monday morning start.
Steve Chivers and Jim Hodgetts tackled last year’s Challenge in a 997cc Ford Anglia, this year they have more power with a larger engine but were unlucky to suffer a small fire, they are back on the road again now following repairs by the sweep crews.
After the short tunnel crossing to France a quick trip down the Autoroute brought crews to the luxurious Westminster Hotel and a group meal to start the week as they mean to continue.
When crews left Le Touquet on Monday morning it was bitterly cold but bright blue skies promised a good day ahead, temperatures have barely risen above freezing and the roadsides have a good covering of snow reminding crews that this is after all a Winter Rally. A regularity section was first before crews went to the fabulous Circuit de Folembray. Not only was this the lunch halt but a driving test and regularity test were also completed, First casualty of the day was the MG Magnette of Dave Axten / Terry Green who broke the throttle cable, a cure can be found and they’ll be on the way again. Not so fortunate was the Lotus Europa of Paul Hargreaves and David Naylor, Paul is better know for the film work he has done on many past events. Wheel bearing failure sidelining this unusual rally car, it really does seem to have been a day for mechanical maladies as the Talbot 105 of Chris Paveley and Sarah Kellett was last seen on a transporter heading back to the UK – a cracked cylinder head the cause of their early demise. We hope that the Hillman Imp of Richard Tompkins and Richard Askew has not suffered lasting damage when the head gasket failed – this is the first time that a Hillman Imp has tackled the Winter Challenge.
At the Folembray driving test the quickest time was set by David Rayner and Neil Revington in a Sunbeam Tiger, 4 seconds quicker than the next car, this test used a shortened version of the full circuit. The Class Scoring system helping to ensure that competitors are competing in the Tests against cars with similar performance.
Another regularity followed this before a run into the night halt at Auxerre, the bar was bussing – patchy snow had been around in a few places and it was on one of these that Paul Carter had decided to try out his new snow tyres – the car left the road and rolled over – thankfully only the pride of the crew was hurt. Perhaps next year he’ll buy himself a set of Vredestein snow tyres!
Reports back from the advance car have included a request for new shovels as they have worn out theirs digging themselves out of deep snow – re routes are already planned as the cold weather means there is little chance of a thaw in the next 48 hours – it really does seem that this year the Winter Challenge will live up to it’s title.
It’s a relaxed morning on Tuesday but the competition goes on well into the evening with the Vichy – Vichy night loop.
Currently in the lead of the Masters Category are the Dutch pairing of Jan Ebus and Lester van der Zalm with just 2 seconds of penalties whilst 3 crews tie for 3rd with 6 seconds each. Clubmans Category is led by first timers gary and Nina Kendall in the Lotus Elan Plus 2, whilst Tony Covill and Paul Bloxide lead the Vintageants in a Bentley Mk VI Special. Tony of course more usually known for driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow – not much wonder he was finding the Bentley cold!.
Leg 2 & 3 - The Winter Challenge lives up to it’s name…
The freezing conditions have continued today and crews woke to clear skies but very unclear windscreens and pieces of cardboard had a sudden value as they were used to blank off radiators and get some heat into the car. First away was the Lancia Fulvia of Jan Ebus and Lester van der Zalm. It was an advisory route only for the morning so many were taking the opportunity to carry out some repairs before setting off south. Several cars were seen being towed around the car park in an effort to coax them to life.
Although there has not been any fresh snow for a couple of days the continuing low temperatures mean that snow is still plentiful and many reckon that this has been the “snowiest” Winter Challenge yet.
Lunch was hosted by the Hotel Morvan in St Leger but as they did not have enough room to accommodate all 140 competitors they took over the local village hall! It was a wonderful atmosphere in the Winter sunshine but competition got underway after lunch with two regularity sections. Both were snow covered and there were many tales of cars sliding off the road into ditches and having to be towed back onto the road – the snow is generally quite forgiving but the Alfa Romeo Giulia of Clement Wilson and Ed Galvin had some nasty marks on the side, this crew also had a good “solo” performance on the evening section. Having been stuck at one point Clement had got out to push and once Ed was going he didn’t want to stop so carried on and completed the route by himself! Clement walked for a while in the bitter cold thinking that any minute Ed would be back to pick him up – no such luck but eventually he was picked up by some fellow Irish competitors who brought him back to Vichy. Not so sure that Clement will be so keen to push in the future.
After a good meal in the Aletti Palace at Vichy crews went out to tackle a three hour section, this section of route had been kept secret and was only issued 30 minutes before a competitors starting time – preventing any reconnaissance or hours spent searching the internet for large scale maps.
All started off well with the leading crews not being penalised at the time controls but a series of minor incidents led to many competitors becoming stuck on the second regularity section. At one point competitors managed to get into a situation where they could neither get up the hill nor turn round to get back down. Hopefully they will learn from this in future and give each other some space so that a traffic jam does not occur. The sweep crews have been working overtime on pulling cars out from the ditches. The Rover P4 of Robert and Susan McClean is a heavy car and it took the combined forces of the two 4 x 4 driving sweep crews to extract them.
The Mini Cooper of Simon and Jayne Dedman is the smallest engined car on the event, this is the first time out for car and crew, the poor weather is not suiting the Mini – although they have traction it had not been possible to source snow tyres for it’s 10 inch wheels.
The winter weather conditions are building a good deal of camaraderie between the crews and each night the bar talk is about how somebody got up the hill or in today’s case who was to blame for the hold up.
John Bateson and Fred Bent had been complaining of a noisy axle in their Sunbeam Rapier but further investigations discovered a broken rear spring so more repairs are required to this.
The Volvo Amazon of Graham Bond and Pippa Inglis developed a strange noise so Graham pulled over to await the sweep crew but when restarted the noise had gone! They’ll start again tomorrow morning but it will be interesting to see if the noise returns in daylight hours.
Our very own Penelope Pitstop aka Jocelyn Williams was on form last night and when asked whether she had “clocked” in swiftly retorted “That’s not MY job”, Co driver Mutley duly came forward timecard in paw and checked in at the time. It’s good to see such sharing of roles between driver and co-driver. A crew who do share the driving and navigating are Danny Fenske and Vic Mounter – new to the Challenge they went straight in at the top by entering their Volvo Amazon into the Masters Category, their confidence boosted by a day at the Rally School hosted by Willy Cave a couple of weeks ago.
Meanwhile in the Clubmans section good performances continue to be achieved by newcomers Paul Murphy and Alan Smith, the TR3 of Dutch crew Jan and Hugo Veening has moved up a couple of places today with a steady drive.
The Vichy – Vichy evening leg has seen several changes in the leaderboard, Mickey Gabbett and Michael Jackson have taken the lead but are closely followed by fellow Irish man Frank Fennell and the Welsh map wizard Colin Francis.
The advance car has reported that plenty of snow lays ahead so it’s going to be a tough time for competitors and officials alike over the final two days of the event.
Leg 4 & 5 - Challenging Times Ahead
There has been no let up in the frosty conditions and local news papers have been publishing details of record low temperatures – down to minus 29.5 in one location.
Having spent much of the previous evening digging themselves out of snow filled ditches the Lotus Cortina refused to start as there was not even enough power left in the battery to run the electric fuel pumps – that’ll teach ‘em for not using a mechanical pump – it’s also rather an incongruous end to co driver John Vipond’s 46 year rallying career – he says he is going to retire but we hear that quite often from many co-drivers.
Everybody else got off okay and left behind Vichy’s charming Aletti Palace Hotel – the event has it’s ups and downs with hotels as in some cases only lower standard hotels are available. If a strict ruling of hotel standards was implicated it would leave only a few areas open to rally organisers looking for 130 plus beds.
The Clubman section were last on the road at the start of the day but later they cut a section to get back in front of the Masters and this is where the fun began. Many Clubman crews are less experienced and this was highlighted in a snowy regularity where some of the Clubman crews became stuck and delayed later Masters cars – thankfully this has been considered in the Event Regulations and a notional penalty applied.
When crews returned from the previous evening leg there was a good atmosphere in the bar, and this has continued throughout the day, most crews having found out what advantages snow chains can bring and that they are well worth carrying – as long as you bother to fit them as soon you start loosing traction.
Having been fed and watered at the lunch stop - Hotel Glycines in Vieille-Brioude it was time for another short evening section before returning to the warmth and comfort of the Aletti Palace.
Although the conditions are difficult the competitors are really enjoying themselves in the ultimate winter challenge. If the depths of snow being talked about are true we should potentially have many competitors looking for a job in the mining industry.
David Morgan and Richard Birchall are busily looking for a new windscreen for their TR4, whilst Frank Fennell try’s to book the services of the sweep crew to fix his brakes. David MacKay and Tony Davies are cruising around in the Aston Martin DB5, the big Aston must be a handful on the snow, it’s good to see a variety of cars out on this event and with the leader always coming from the pre 68 category there is no danger of the event becoming dominated by ‘70’s cars.
The leaderboard is still changing and anyone within the top 10 could be a winner, It only takes a slight error of judgement and a lead or placing can be thrown away. Several crews decided not to go out on the evening leg figuring that due to the extremely poor weather conditions the penalty for staying in may not be much worse than going out and missing a few controls.
Clubman competitors were not included on the evening leg and instead attended a reception hosted the Mayor of Le Puy-en-Velay.
Thursday sees a long drive across the Rhone to before a tea halt at an Auberge just outside Nyons before the final evening section which is well capable of springing a few shocks as co-drivers digest and understand the information that will probably win or loose the event.
Leg 6 & 7 - Volcanic Eruptions
There has been no let up in the winter weather and for much of the day and evening crews have been driving on snow. At one point in the evening it almost reached blizzard conditions and the largely open pre war cars called it a day and stopped at Serres rather than fight their way across to Digne-les-Bains.
The endurance aspect of the event is starting to take its toll on the cars and many crews now have small problems that our sweep crew do their best to solve in either a permanent or temporary way. The bad news for the competitors is that the ever popular and cheerful team of Peter and Betty-Ann Banham have had to retire from the event. They were caught out on a small patch of ice and despite Peter’s best efforts the vehicle left the road and collided with a tree – the tree came out the winner, Peter is fine but poor Betty was taken to hospital for observation, she was later discharged and then flown home with Cambridge Motorsport kindly taking care of their vehicle.
Roger Byford and Willy Cave were having a good run but a suspension problem has dropped them down the leader board. Willy has this year been celebrating 50 years since he first competed on the Monte Carlo Rally. Another crew with suspension problems is the MG Magnette of Dave Axten and Terry Green – this time it was a broken leaf spring that caused the car to list to one side – there is no truth in the suggestion that the list is caused by Dave weighing twice as much as Terry. Father and son team of Nigel and David Redwood were having a good run but drove off the road on the final regularity section of the event and gained an hour’s penalty dropping them at least 15 places.
Stuart Phillips and Peter Moss have shown that getting a good result in having a standard car is quite possible – they have got their MGA up into seventh place, trying no doubt to emulate the performances of fellow MGA driver Ron Gammons – a three times winner of this event. Andrew Belcher and David Burrows have had a good steady drive in the Triumph 2000 – a nice comfortable car and well suited to the long driving days. Andy reckoned it was the best skiing holiday he’d ever been on!
The top crews generally continued to make good progress through the fresh evening snow but Jan Ebus and Lester van der Zalm were unfortunate enough to suffer a puncture on a very narrow road and dropped many minutes putting them down into fifth place. This let Terry Pickering and Anthony Preston into the lead and a Winter Challenge win – neither have done the event before and Terry claims not to have driven on snow before. Second place was taken by the Irish pairing of Mickey Gabbett and Michael Jackson in an Alfa Romeo Giulia and in third was the Sunbeam Tiger of Malcolm Pickering and Andy Gibson – a good effort at Tiger taming by Malcolm in the winter conditions.
Gary and Nina Kendall have led the Clubman’s section all week and for this leg they didn’t even have a speedometer let alone a Halda, (the very accurate mechanical distance measuring device favoured by all top co-drivers). Second was father and son team of Jim and Tim Elston in a Mini Cooper S with third place being taken by the Morris Minor Convertible of Chris Scattergood and Simon Gilhooly – this late entry having been the recipient of an underside rebuild the week before the event.
Vredestein sponsored a competition in Classic Cars and the winners of this – Tim and Anne Riley brought along their Bristol 400 – the only “tin top” amongst the Vintageants, The effort has all proved worthwhile and they finish 2nd overall in the this Category. The Vintageant category was won by the Bentley Special of Tony Covill and Paul Bloxidge – an excellent result first time out for the car, third was the Alvis of Bill Jiggins and Steve Gipson – they were extremely lucky to get to Monte-Carlo as when parking the car outside the Hermitage the clutch release lever broke!
Many reckoned it had been the toughest event for years but improvements to the overall organisation made it achievable for many competitors, inclusion of hotels, evening meals and lunches reducing the stress in the non rallying moments and the free bar at Digne-les-Bains was very nearly dried out!
Vredestein confirmed their position as the leading producer of snow tyres – the top three Masters all on Vredestein tyres, Bert Stellinga MD of Vredestein (UK) Ltd announced at the prize giving that they would return to support the event for a 3rd successive year in 2006.
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