THE GREATEST GRAVEL RALLYIN THEWORLD?
Anyone who has visited New Zealand will know about its countless miles of public gravel roads. Superb road surfaces, views to die for and very little habitation make the land of the long white cloud a haven for gravel rallying.
Every other year, the Silver Fern Rally offers the ultimate gravel adventure. For a week, some of these roads are closed to public use and turned over to the rallying fraternity. Though the rally is focused on historics, a modern twowheel-drive event runs alongside.
The route is beyond anything we can dream of in the UK. Each day covers around 100 stage miles, often in stages that are 30 and 40 miles long, and in a week the rally covers around 800 stage miles. That’s more than two seasons of BTRDA Rally Series competition in seven days.
It is little wonder that crews from the UK regularly trek to the other side of the world to tackle this biennial event and they have done well. Very well, indeed. In 2014, Vince Bristow scored the result of a lifetime by winning in a locally- prepared Ford Escort Mk2, Meirion Evans topped the historics in 2016 and most recently Matthew Robinson won from Roger Chilman and Simon Tysoe as Brits took a clean sweep of the historic podium.
Event promoter Peter Martin from the Ultimate Rally Group is proud of the product. “We probably have the best gravel roads in the world and we have such a high number of quality roads,” he says. “We have a huge variety of roads and so we can regularly change the route and not do the same stages over and over.
“We rarely, if at all, repeat a stage through the event so every stage is different. We have tight, twisty roads to fast, open and flowing roads. The idea is to pick the stages that are kinder on the cars.
“We don’t want to bring people from the other side of the world and stick them in a rocky, sh***y piece of road. People come for the roads and if you are spending all that money, we want to make sure that the event is organised and run in a way that gives you the biggest opportunity to finish. We don’t want to issue unnecessary time penalties and we don’t put hooks in the regulations to try and catch people out. It is about engagement and completion.”
Simply getting a finish on this marathon event is some achievement and getting a rally car and spares to New Zealand is a major undertaking. But the organisers are on hand to help with shipping, customs, hire vans and pretty much everything else.
“From the UK, the car will be gone for three months,” says Martin. “We highly recommend that, if not a new build, it is a fresh rebuild. You don’t want to spend the time and money to ship a car with halfworn components. It is going to do two years of UK rallying in a week. We have suppliers in New Zealand who hire cars. Some people have dry-hired the shell and the running gear and brought their own engine, so that’s an option. But the majority of people bring their own car because the cost of getting the car to New Zealand is actually quite small when you plan it properly.”
The most common sea freight option is three cars in one 40-foot container and a 20-foot container for all the spares and tyres. Shared between three cars, it works out at around £3000 to get a car and kit there and back. The 2018 entry fee was 9000 Kiwi dollars and with insurance that totals about £5000. Add in flights, hotels, vehicle hire and tyres and this is an event that starts at around £20,000. Then, you will come back with a car that needs a major refresh.
However, you’ll have done 800 top quality stage miles at a cost from £25 per mile at a time when the entry fee alone for a UK event stands at close to £15 per mile. The next edition is scheduled for late 2020.
“Going forward, our format will be a seven-day rally and we will run at the end of November and early December in 2020. We’re yet to confirm which island and I hope to announce that soon,” says Martin, who has endless options across New Zealand’s North and South Islands.
“It will run regardless of the number of entries. There will be a half-day break in the middle of the week. That’s to try and get people socialising. We’ve seen that the first two or three days are very serious as people get themselves into the groove but, by day three, they are relaxing a bit and that’s when we want to get everyone together and have a drink. We plan to take them to an adventure place that New Zealand is renowned for.”
Martin says that around 60 entries works well but they can cater for up to 100 cars.
“We have plenty of time in our road closures to get the cars through the stages and most of our closures are four and a half hours so it’s not difficult to get up to 100 cars through,” he explains.
“There are two competitions within the Silver Fern: the Historic Trophy and the Challenge Trophy for nonhistoric two-wheel-drive cars. A historic-looking car with modern running gear can certainly come and play. We see front-wheel-drive Honda Civics and Ford Fiestas and that sort of thing but by far the most common vehicle entered in the Silver Fern Rally is the Ford Escort Mk2 BDG.” ■