Fat Albert Stages 2003

Keevel Airfield - 26th July 2003

Report by James Walters.

Duncan Gamage and James Walters were out on Saturdays event at Keevil Airfield as Thame Motorsports sole competitor in what turned out to be an exciting and oversubscribed event, with 80 entries.

The trusty Nova had a trying day up against the usual smatterings of Darrians, Metro 6R4s, Cosworths and Novas and 205s. These included the Furzland's 6r4 still sporting its original Rothhmans livery. James & Duncan were trying to beat their performance last year, when they came 2nd in class. However, they were up against stiff opposition, with Nick and Karen Ebsworth's new and very highly tuned 106 XSi, and Julian Gunnel and Penny Dews faithful Group N 106 Rallye battling for class honours as well.

We had gone up and scruitineered the night before, which gave us a relaxing start on Saturday morning. However, as we had no service crew, we had to set up camp ourselves. The day started well with a damp track for the first stage, but the sun was shining and Duncan drove a fantastic first stage . Despite his efforts, we were still 4 secs down on the class leading 106. We were a bit bemused by this, as our car had run faultlessly. We decided to stroll over to have a look at the competition during the 2nd service hault. The 106 was beautifully prepared, with a full weld in multipoint cage, and under the bonnet was the give away. Full throttle bodies, plate dif , sequential gearbox and 4 pot brakes, and all in all about 25 bhp more than we can muster.

However, the dissapointment was definately being felt in the driving seat, and despite the car running faultlessly, our stage times started to fall, with the third place in class car of Julian and Penny starting to close up on us. Then after lunch the heavens opened, Duncan picked up his times again, and we were off. Despite only having the near slick Yokohama 032's, we started to claw back the gap to the first in class car, setting fastest in class times on the last three stages.

James made his usual one co-driver mistake of the day, when we went sailing past the time control into service, and had to argue with the clerk of course to prevent us from being excluded. However, the least said about that the better, but all I can say in my defence was that it was raining very hard and the car was very steamed up, the marshal was hiding in his car and we only missed it by 10 ft!

The final stage was make or break, helped by the class leading 106 hitting a chicane, and having to do half a lap with a pallet under his car. The road by now was awash with water, and the complex section, which was much tighter than last year, was nothing but mud, making it more like a rallycross stage than a tarmac event. Anyway we were trying are hardest to make up the difference, we were at full chat around a flat left, approaching a chicane. The car aquaplaned, and was refusing to stop. then at the last minute we found some grip and managed to chuck the car in on the handbreak, missing the barriers by inches. It was a close run thing, and got a round of applause from the rather damp group of marshals watching.

At the finish we ended up 16th overall, and 2nd in class, missing the first car by around 21 secs. Stephen Furzeland unsurprisingly repeated his winning feat of last year in the Metro, with Stuart Fossey winning class D in his beautiful full spec MkII Escort, and Andy Dawe winning Class C in his Nissan Sunny GTI. The latter had a particularly eventful day, knocking off the front end of the car on one stage, and smashing in the drivers door on another. Overall a throughly great day, and thank the lord we didnt have to do any servicing more serious than tightening an anti-roll bar mounting bolt, change tyres, clean windows and door numbers and fill up with fuel.