2003 News

Andy Corner wins Oakington Challenge

19th October 2003: Andy Corner and co-driver James Greenwood have won the Oakington Challenge for the 2nd year running. They had competed on the Jersey Rally the day before and drove through the night to reach Oakington, near Cambridge in time to start the final Oakington round.

An over fuelling / popping & banging misfire before the start was diagnosed as a broken inlet manifold gasket. Duncan Gamage and the service boys quickly fabricated a new gasket, and the car was scruitineered well in time for the start. The first few stages saw the car running well but lying in 15th overall and third in class. A rethink in tyre strategy was taken for the next stage. However problems with the car being stuck in 2nd gear for most of the stage meant that it was not until the next stage that the benefits were seen in the stage times. The gear problem on SS5 (and worries about it in SS6) luckily didn’t cause a major problem, as only around 30secs were dropped on the stage on the next car in class. At the end thanks to retirement of the class leader Andy finished 10th overall and 2nd in class. This was enough to clinch the Oakington challenge for the second year running.

Dick Mauger has just set what must be a club record having competed on three single venue events in just eight days. Firstly, on 13th September he was at Stafford but unfortunately was not classified after missing a split!. The following day he made up for this with 3rd overall at Oakington. This was then followed up the next weekend with 10th Overall at Avon Park.

Spotted Dick and Custard Stages

7th September 2003: Rob S* competed on his third event of the year on the Spotted Dick & Custard Stages, Longcross. The warm day saw 72 starters with 17 in Rob's class. Rob reported that on stage 1 he boiled the brake fluid after about 1.5 miles and fan belt broke. The navigator was also lost for part of the stage (The Snake). Stage 2: navigator lost for half the stage, but manage to do exactly the same as stage 1. Stage 3 & 4: getting the hang of it now. Stage 5 & 6: signs of the head gasket not looking to healthy! but still pressing on. Stage 7: start this stage level on time with next car in class, by end of the stage was 5 secs. quicker, and again on stage 8 quicker by five seconds. Finished the day 29th O/A, and 3rd in class by ten Seconds, 29 seconds behind 2nd in class.

26th July 2003: Richard Crossland/Linette Applegate were out on the Quinton stages on 26th July, a round of the BTRDA and attracting a full 150 entries for the 8 forest stages. Their class,B13, attracted 25 entries. The car ran cleanly all day and they finished an excellent 19th Overall and 8th in class.

26th July 2003: Duncan Gamage & James Walters were out on 26th July at the Fat Albert stages, Keevil aerodrome. This was their first event in 2003,and were soon on the pace. They finished 16th Overall and second in class.
Click here to read James Walters' rally report 

6th July 2003: Andy Corner competed at the Essex Charity stages Multi-venue on Sunday 6th July. The event attracted 48 entries for the 15 stages on offer and the field was headed by 4 Subarus and an EVO. Andy's 1600 class had 15 entries.

The event was advertised as sealed surface, but Andy found himself flat in 5th with knobblies on the front and slicks rear on a grass track with huge drains either side! The car ran perfectly, with only a loose exhaust for Simon and Ed to fix, and he won the class and finished 8th overall."

2nd July 2003: Our Caption Competition offered the chance to win a 6 month subscription to RAUK, a new magazine devoted to clubman rallying. There were 11 entries for the competition and the 11 judges awarded points as follows: 5 for first, 4 for second, and so on. The entries were: -

8th June 2003: Thame Motorsport Club fielded it's best ever entry on this local rally at Abingdon Airfield with 10 crews among the 110 car entry. This included the club's first ever all girl pairing of Shelly Nutt and Lynette Applegate, in their Peugeot 106 GTi and no less than 5 crews in Escort & Sierra Cosworths together with 3 Vauxhalls and a single BMW. Between them the crews picked up a third of all the event awards.
Click here to read James Walters' rally report 
For a Competitor's view of the Rally click here for Rob Slingland's report

24th May 2003: Richard Crossland & Lynette Applegate contested the Red Dragon stages on 24th May. Problems on SS1 dropped them to a lowly 154th O/all, but fought back setting 17th fastest on SS2, and 21st+ 24th fastest on SS4+5 to finish a very creditable 32nd overall and 5th in class of 15.
Click here to read Richard's report on the BTRDA series

9th/10th May 2003:  Matt Humphris & Andy Cadle made their annual trip to the Isle of Man for round 3 of Kumho Tyres National Rally Championship. The rally started with 5 night stages on Friday totaling 34 miles with about 30 road miles and continued on Saturday with a further 8 stages and 86 stage miles over the islands narrow, bumpy lanes. Hoping to repeat last year's class win they scored 10 fastest stages times, in their class, from 13 stages and took another class win, finishing with a class lead of 3m 43s and 56th overall out of almost 140 starters.

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