OVERCOMING THE IMPOSSIBLE ODDS
How the Roger Albert Clark Rally bosses performed a miracle
The 2010 edition of the Roger Albert Clark Rally, run in late November, was the seventh running of the event designed to recreate the spirit of the RACS of the 1970s. Rally manager Colin Heppenstall planned a route covering 170 stage miles in 24 stages: starting in Yorkshire on Friday evening and finishing in Carlisle on Monday afternoon.
A field of 78 cars, predominantly historic, duly gathered at Pickering showground on Friday for the start. However, the forecast was for snow on the east of the country and no-one could have predicted just how much that would impact the rally.
There was several inches on the ground in Pickering, but up on the Yorkshire moors in the stages like Dalby and Langdale there was much, much more.
While the usual documentation and scrutineering was going on, Heppenstall was in Dalby which was the setting for two runs through a nine-mile stage as Friday evening’s opener.
Heppenstall says: “There had been snow in the forecast but I was shocked at the snow in Dalby. I just took a blinkered view and it never entered my head to cancel.
If I could get the first car into the first stage, I could make the rest up from there.”
He had been a young organiser when snow hit the 1986 National Breakdown Rally and the show was going to go on.
That first evening was hugely difficult. Heppenstall persuaded a local farmer to plough the route, and duly took the wrath of the Forestry Commission.
Trees had come down under the weight of snow and had to be shifted and at one point Heppenstall towed a huge branch behind his 4x4 as an impromptu snowplough. The stage route had to be shortened and so started a weekend of Heppenstall and members of his organising team meeting competitors at controls and giving them updates on stage routes and where to go next.
It turned into a late night as cars had to be pushed at various points but the rally was running and Rob Smith took the early lead in his Vauxhall Chevette from Belgians Stefaan Stouf and Joris Erard in their Escort Mk1. Given the forecast, Heppenstall had approved the use of snow tyres and Stouf was well set up with some highly effective Dunlops.
Stuart and Linda Cariss were running near the head of the rally in their 1600cc Escort Mk1. Stuart Cariss remembers: “Heading back to Pickering for service the planned route was impassable, so it was two-way rally traffic on a single width road covered in ice! Along with four other crews, we spent 10 minutes getting Bob Bean and his Cortina back onto the road after he tried to pass an oncoming crew by taking to the snow-covered verge and ended up stuck in a fence.”
While trying to get the event running on Friday, Heppenstall had also been trying to work out a plan for Saturday which was due to centre on Oliver’s Mount and Langdale before heading north and west for stages in Hamsterley and Shepherdshield before the overnight halt in Carlisle.
The asphalt Oliver’s Mount stage was covered in snow and ice, but Heppenstall blagged a ton of grit from the venue owners, the local authority, to get it passable. Some inspired thinking by safety officer Brian Avery came up with a shortened Langdale route that was workable and so, once again, it was time to brief crews at the stage starts. While the uphill parts of Oliver’s Mount had been gritted, the level sections had not and this prompted a master class of ice driving by Geoff Jones (search Youtube for ‘Geoff Jones Oliver’s Mount’).
While crews were sliding around in Yorkshire, Heppenstall was now tackling the next challenge of how to get the rally out of Yorkshire. The planned route was north over the moors but that was reportedly impassable. Eventually, Heppenstall rerouted the entire rally, including all the service crews, down the A64 past York and then up the A1 heading for Hamsterley.
Pickering-based Steve Magson was competing in his Opel Ascona, complete with a very poor heater. “After Langdale we were rerouted up the A1 and my co-driver Geoff Atkinson said there was no rush so we stopped for coffee,” says Magson. “The service crew gave us extra socks and coats to cover our legs. Going up the A1, the windscreen froze. We managed to arrive at Hamsterley and found that we were nearly the last car on the road. We had to be pushed off the startline, but we passed two cars.”
Having lost some stage mileage in Yorkshire, Heppenstall, who’d managed just three hours in bed on
Friday night, pulled another rabbit out of the hat by quickly arranging a double run through Hamsterley.
Dave Price, co-driver for leading contender Nick Elliott, takes up the story: “It was the first time we met the Heppenstalls and their wonderful ‘keep the event going’approach. Writing the times for the bonus second Hamsterley run on the back of the time card is a classic moment. Ironically, had there not been this second run, we would have led the rally at the end of the day.”
Shepherdshield was another massive challenge for crews and even the management vehicles struggled to get through but, eventually, the survivors reached Carlisle. Stouf now had an 11-second lead over Elliott and a minute over Rob Smith and Andrew Haddon.
Co-driver Phil Clarke, who won the rally in 2012 with Marty Mccormack, was alongside Welsh ace Geoff Jones. Clarke says: “We went off in Hamsterley and broke a track control arm but
Matt Edwards was there spectating and helped us get back on.”
Stouf’s Dunlops were proving hugely effective but he would have struggled had David Stokes not given him some spare covers. “During the whole event we had only one small moment when we slipped off the road on a square junction,” said co-driver Erard. “There was no ditch and no spectators, but in reverse we were able to get out of the field with only a loss of about 10-15s. One good feature of the massive snow was that the darkness in the UK was not so dark anymore!”
“I have very little recollection of the three-hour journey up to Hamsterley,” says Heppenstall. “I didn’t fall asleep but was on the phone a lot and just thinking about what we had done during the event so far and hoping that the snow didn’t fall in Scotland as I knew there was only a very light dusting of snow there and all was OK as planned for Sunday.”
The further west the rally went, the better the conditions and Sunday’s stages in Ae and Twiglees had little snow but were still frozen hard. The fact that most of Sunday could run as planned gave Heppenstall a little breathing space as he worked out what to do on Monday when the planned sting in the tail was due to run in the central block of Kielder forest.
Cariss takes up the story of the Scottish stages: “Ae was the longest stage at over 14 miles. The surface was frozen but mainly clear of snow. It was our best stage of the event and we really enjoyed it: great fun! Then it was on to Twiglees 1 and back to snow and ice. While waiting for the stage to open, across the valley we saw the Land Rover Freelander opening car go off.”
However, Sunday marked Elliott’s departure from the lead battle, as co-driver Price recalls. “We should have let the event come to us and not pushed hard in Ae on snow tyres, where we punctured twice,” says Price. “Then we overreacted and fitted gravel tyres for Twiglees to save the snows. Ice and a ditch awaited.”
Ae proved terminal for Magson too. “We went off and damaged the front end of the car and my wrist,” he recalls. “We got to service and the guys strapped my wrist with duct tape. But as we were leaving service the guys notice a leak from the oil cooler. They were about to by-pass the oil cooler, when I said: ‘don’t worry, I can’t drive the car.” I was taken home to Pickering, which was a six-hour journey, and the next day went to the hospital with what turned out to be a fractured wrist.”
While all this was going on, Gwyndaf Evans was on a charge in his Viking Motorsport Escort Mk2 after a disastrous start to the rally when Pirelli was caught with no suitable tyres. Evans struggled in Yorkshire before more relevant rubber was flown in from Italy and by the second Twiglees stage he was up to fourth, having ended Friday evening down in 25th place. By the time the crews arrived back in Carlisle, Evans was up to third behind Stouf and Haddon.
Sunday evening’s trip into Newcastleton was cut to only one stage instead of two when rescue units got stuck in the snow, which was lying thick. However, it was even worse in the central block of Kielder. “On Sunday evening in Newcastleton we lost nine cars in half a mile of sheet ice,” said Heppenstall, who had spent much of Sunday working out a route for Monday. The planned stages were out of the question: the snow was just too deep and though the Forestry Commission were prepared to plough them, the strong winds due for Sunday night would have negated that work as the snow drifted back.
Instead, Heppenstall moved the entire leg into a different forest and plotted a stage in Kershope to be run twice. At one point on Sunday morning, he privately accepted that Monday would have to be cancelled, but an hour later he had a new plan. “There was too much snow in main Kielder, so we arranged two runs at
Kershope on Monday. In Kershope it was a foot deep rather than two feet!”
Incredible support from the local forestry team made this impossible plan work and when crews left Carlisle on Monday morning, they were sent straight to Kershope where a team of officials has been working hard to grit the public road up from the bridge and make it passable.
The reduced mileage on Monday probably cost Evans the rally as he pulled back almost a minute from Stouf in the pair of five-mile stages. The planned leg had been 36 stage miles but it was Stouf and Erard who led the field back to the ceremonial finish in the centre of Carlisle. Evans was second from Haddon while Dave Hemingway and Simon Ashton dominated the concurrent Open Rally.
Clarke summed up the event: “It was different for everyone and is the one we’ll always remember. I thought the effort from the organisers was amazing. Colin just kept appearing everywhere with new instructions and a ‘just get there and forget about the road timing’ comment!”
Stouf and Erard took the overall spoils back to Belgium after a fantastic performance, boosted by some very good Dunlops. “The 2010 event was very special for Stefaan and I, because we won the event,” says Erard. “Maybe the biggest point for us was to get home to Belgium! We had to go round the M25 with our van, motorhome and chase car, but at one point the whole motorway was closed for all traffic. So, we had to sleep in the middle of the M25 in our motorhome!”
It had been the adventure of a lifetime for competitors, service crews, marshals, spectators and organisers. A lesser man at the top would have pulled the plug on Friday and sent everyone home. But Heppenstall is a seriously determined character and he had a strong team around him.at the awards’ ceremony on Monday afternoon he got a standing ovation and the competitors presented him with the ‘spirit of the rally’ award.
“If we’d not run it, the rally was never going to run again,” says Heppenstall, a decade later. “The crews went with it and at each stage start and stage finish they were getting fresh instructions. I didn’t break one rule! We bent some Forestry Commission rules but they were happy to work with me. Every person worked to make the rally work. It was a complete team effort and without the whole team it would never have worked. Now, I really still can’t believe that we achieved it.”■