Tales from the Black Stuff ….
Lete’s start with a nice wee story, before we get ridiculous. When David Bogie suffered his Launch Control problem on the Focus at the start of the first stage on the Reivers he had a chat with arch rival Euan Thorburn while waiting at the start of the second run of the same test. Euan told David he didn’t use Launch Control because of issues in the past, so David stopped using it. Result? He was 0.6 seconds slower than Euan over the same test and thereafter ‘manually’ launched the beast off the start line on all the stages. Crikey, they’ll be getting married next.
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Dougal Brown was fairly pleased with his 17th place overall on the Reivers, and more importantly 12th SRC crew, as: “It means we picked up a good haul of points which moves us up to 7th place overall in the driver and co-driver’s championships and Lewis (Rochford) extends his lead in the Junior Co-drivers’ championship.”
“We started off with good pace in SS1 but had a few issues with brakes and transmission throughout the day which we couldn’t completely fix. In the end we had to get a finish without any heroics in order to prevent further damage to the transmission.”
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Alan Gardiner departed the fray in the middle of SS1 in that glorious looking and sounding MkI. Fortunately, it was nothing deadly serious, but the throttle linkage completely disintegrated. Still, plenty of time to get it right for Mull!
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Spotted hirpling about the service area on crutches was Laura Marshall, but still fit for her co-driving duties for Graeme Smith. “It’s nothing too serious, I dislocated my knee two weeks ago,” said Laura. And then promptly refused to offer any more information as to how it happened. The mind boggles.
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Speaking of ‘the ladies’, here’s an interesting statistic. One hundred per cent of all the all-lady crews finished, that’s a 100% finishing record. As for the men? Lessons could be learned here, eh? Anyway, Carin Logan and Christine Sanderson finished 56th overall in the Citroen on the National, and Caroline Will and Paula Swinscoe finished 61st in a Subaru Impreza on the Reivers while Sian Beaty and Julianne Antrobus were 62nd in the wee Ka.
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When the intercom broke on John Morrison’s Lancer on the National on Saturday, that meant Susan Shanks had to shout at him. No problem. As one of her dear and close friends pointed out, she’s a teacher, she’s used to shouting. Anyway, they got the intercom fixed overnight and Susan was able to use it on Sunday’s Reivers, but according to John: “All I could hear was a squeak, she had lost her voice.” Apparently the school weans had a very quiet day on Monday!
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A bucket of cold water was needed at the finish for the Forgans, and it had nothing to do with the sunshine and the heat. When they stepped out of the car at the finish, Kathryn hugged her hubby and gave him a smacker on the cheek (the top set of cheeks, not the bottom set!): “I’m so proud of him, he didn’t give up and we kept on going.” That was after a day-long series of wee niggly problems with the car, but Ian never once entertained the thought of giving up, packing up and going home. Given Kathryn’s enthusiastic and affectionate support for this endeavour, I reckon Ian would have carried the wee b*gg*r home – the Ka that is, not Kathryn.
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When explaining the circumstances leading up to his life-shortening, pants-threatening spin in the Bothwell test, co-driver turned driver Stuart Loudon sheepishly admitted: “When Johnnie (Bould) made the call, I heard the words ‘L3 left’ but didn’t hear the word ‘loose’!” A lesson for all drivers here – pay attention.
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There was an unfortunate finish to the BRC Challenge event when awards were presented to the top three finishing crews in Kelso town square in the presence of the Provost. In a bid to keep the peace with the local dignitaries, the organisers arranged for the first three to be presented with their awards knowing that there was an unresolved issue with third place. Afterwards with Time Cards checked and results confirmed, Steven Smith and Daniel Johnstone were credited with third place, but they had missed out on the champagne shower. Not that it was cheap stuff, but it did leave a bad taste in Steven and Daniel’s mouths!
Hindsight is a wonderful gift, but when there is doubt about an award winning placing on an event, then perhaps the award should not be presented at all. In this case, the top two placings were pretty secure, and therefore it might have been wise to present only these awards. I know it’s unsatisfactory, and mistakes will happen, but although you can ask for a trophy to be returned you can’t put the champagne back in the bottle.
And finally ….
After years of turbocharged 4WD Lancer driving on the loose and on gravel, John Rintoul appeared at the Reivers for his first run out in his latest rally weapon, a Skoda Fabia R2. With half the power and grip of previous mounts, how did he adjust to the difference in pace? “It was so slow off the mark, that at the start of each stage, I had to look out the window to see if the grass was moving backwards!”
When Dom Buckley (the third) explained in rather earthy and coarse terms for my tender ears (and this was a Sunday!) what had happened to the Subaru’s gearbox early on Sunday morning, I recorded his quote rather more politely as: “The accumulator is burst on the end of the gearbox, the diffs are not working.” But his faither was listening, and Dom Buckley (the second) quickly set the record straight with a rather more enlightening and culturally correct description: “The engineers have bypassed the valve.” That’s Borders-speak for – they’ve clamped the pipe with a set of vicegrips! Loved it.
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