Rally Legend Stage honours a bygone era

In February this year, Motorsport News joined Ian Gwynne, Ryan Champion and Rallyday organiser Tom Davis at the Wiltshire circuit to talk about the potential for a new stage.

With increased Group B interest, Davis was keen to reflect the RAC Rally’s last visit to the track in the first year of the formula, 1983. After a day of driving the track, walking the access roads and plenty of planning in the cold, the Rally Legend Stage was born.

The new test would run for an hour in the middle of the day, taking the best cars and drivers on part of that 1983 stage and putting them right in front of the fans for closer-than-ever action.

Standing outside Castle Combe’s medical centre at just after 1230hrs on Saturday was a pretty cool moment. Craig Breen fired his MG Metro 6R4 into the stage and the noise, as we’d hoped, bounced off the buildings and sent hairs on the backs of thousands of necks in one direction. Upwards.

As the Irishman disappeared into the right-hander around the back of the scrutineering building, I turned to look at what was next and was momentarily stopped in my tracks. They were all there; Jimmy Mcrae was next up in the Rothmans Metro, then there was Alister in the RS1700T followed by a brace of Colin cars including a 2001

Ford Focus RS WRC and beautiful Subaru Impreza

WRC from four years earlier.

After that, a wave of all-italian fever, starting with a Lancia Delta S4, Didier Auriol in a Martini Deltona and then the same shape dressed in the black and gold ex-fabrizio Tabaton loveliness.

And every one of them launched like they were meant to be.

Standing among the masses at the end of the pitlane, the atmosphere and anticipation was electric. The chance of a lifetime was right there to watch the evolution of rallying emerging from a hairpin left, tight at the apex but open at the exit. The BMW M3 struggled for traction, a forestrubbered Focus was a four-wheel drifting spectacle and Nicky Grist’s Group A Celica brutally efficient. We stood, stared and smiled. Introduced to deliver goosebumps, the Legend Stage delivered in spades. Surely it has to be a regular fixture from now on.