SILVER FERN RALLY 2018 REPORT
Winning this year’s New Zealand Silver Fern Rally — and doing so in such an emphatic style — was like completing unfinished business for British historic rally specialists Matthew Robinson and co-driver Sam Collis.
The pair crossed the finish line of the eight-day 3571km marathon gravel event on Saturday afternoon, 1 December, just over four minutes ahead of fellow MKII Ford Escort RS1800 pair Roger Chilman and Max Freeman, with a third British duo, Roger Tysoe and co-driver Paul Morris, making it an all-escort podium in third place.
Robinson and Collis started the 2016 Silver Fern Rally in the South Island in a freshly built Fiat 131R replica. The unsorted car was quick but lacked the reliability of all the Escorts in the event, so Robinson decided that if he couldn’t beat the Ford hordes, he would join them.
“We had teething troubles with that car and decided that we couldn’t come all this way back this time without giving it our best shot[, which is] why we’re in an Escort,” the straighttalking Yorkshireman said.
Certainly, the old motor racing adage ‘to finish first, first you have to finish’ was true of the 2018 event, which started in Hamilton on Saturday, 24 November, and, after crosscrossing the North Island, ended in Rotorua a week later.
Ironically, it was top seeds Meirion Evans and fellow Welshman Lestyn Williams in a newly built MKII Ford Escort who were first to falter and eventually fall.
Evans grabbed an early lead on the opening day only to twice clip fence posts and slip down the order, ceding the lead to Robinson and Collis.
Evans reclaimed the lead briefly at the end of the third day after Robinson slipped off the road on a tricky corner and had to be towed out of a gully. But the writing was on the wall when Evans ran wide and got his Escort stuck in a ditch on the fourth day, and he and Williams finally called it quits after hitting a culvert on day five.
The top Kiwi pairings were also out of luck. Shane Murland and John Benton rolled out of the event on the same corner as Robinson and Collis on the third day, while Jeff Judd and Stephane Prevot were out with a dropped valve early on day four.
New Zealand rallying veteran Bryan Green and co-driver Fleur Pedersen joined the did- not-finish (DNF) list a day later, with a blown motor in their MKII Ford Escort.
In the final wash-up, Matthew Robinson and Sam Collis were too good at the long game, building a lead that they were not to lose, despite Chilman and Freeman (driving the car that Evans and Williams used to win the 2016 event), winning most of the stages over the final three days.
The first Kiwi crew home was Brent Rawstron and Ian Mckee in the first locally built and prepared MKII Ford Escort in fourth place, with the Porsche 911 of local son–father combination Brad and Stuart Mcfarlane in sixth.
The Mcfarlanes ran as high as third (and top Kiwi combo) on day five before a blown gearbox and resultant engine-bay fire saw them slip down the order to eventually cross the finish line in that sixth position.
Marathon rally rookies Mike Goldsbury and Dan Wallis (Toyota Corolla DX) managed to stave off all comers, meanwhile, to win the Challenge class (for modified older cars and modern two-wheel-drive ones) by just over a minute from Dave Strong and Rob Scott (Honda Civic Type R), with category pacesetters Brent Taylor and Dave Neill (Toyota GT86) coming a hard-won third.