Wyedean Forest Rally 2004Forest of Dean - 14th February 2004Report by Andrew Cadle, Photographs by Simon Clarke (www.sc-photography.co.uk) & Andrew Cadle
The Wyedean rally was based at Chepstow racecourse, with most of the stage mileage running through the Forest of Dean and Lower Wye Valley. Stages such as Speech House and Mailscot will be well known to those who remember the RAC rallies of the eighties, when they were a regular feature of the world championship event. However it has been many years since the RAC passed through them and today they are best known for being part of the Wyedean Rally. The Forest of Dean Motor Club's event consisted of 9 stages covering 45 miles, with just 88 road miles. This popular rally always has a full entry and this year was no exception, with a capacity 180 cars. The rally is the opening round of several championships, including the Silkolene 1400 Championship and the BTRDA Dunlop Gold Star Championship. The entry list contained the now numerous selection of Subarus & Evos as well as several more unusual machines such as Andy Burton's Peugeot Cosworth, based on the 306 ice racers and running a mid-mounted 2.5 V6 Cosworth engine from an Opel DTM race car (German Touring Car series). There were also 4 Land Rover V8s, 3 Focus WRCs, a Hyundai WRC and a very rare Metro 8R4 (running a 4.4 litre Rover V8 instead of the usual V6). Thame Motorsport Club had two entries for this event:
The day was bright and dry with the stages in very good condition and holding together well even after the passage of so many cars. The up to 1400cc class cars were first away, in what has now become the established format for the BTRDA series, with the remainder of the field running in the traditional seeding order.
Car 66, Dave and Steve. They started off with 27th fastest on the opening stage. This was followed by times just outside the top 30 on the next couple of stages and an excellent 21st on SS4. A string of top 20 times then followed but they developed turbo trouble later in the event and a slow time on the Speech House stage dropped them down the leader board. However they made it through the final stage (Mailscot) to finish 27th overall and 10th in their class of 37 for this BTRDA round.
Car 242, Gavin and Matt. This was Gavin's first foray into the woods and being a round of the Silkolene 1400 championship the rally had attracted 44 cars in the three 1400 classes - group A (A5), group N (N1) and B9 for clubman's cars. A major benefit to the 1400cc runners on this rally is that they are permitted to run ahead of the 4WD machines and therefore enjoy much better track conditions than most events by avoiding having to run in the ruts created by the more powerful machinery. Gavin & Matt got off to a great start beating 50 cars on the opening stage at Chepstow. They then set consistent times throughout the rest of the event to finished a creditable 97th overall and 10th in the class of 26 (B9). Summary Overall the rally had a very high retirement rate with 50 of the 180 starters failing to make it to the finish. Andy Burton once again emerged as the winner, setting fastest time on 6 of the 9 stages, to become the first driver to win the event four times. Thame Motorsport Club's entries both managed to avoid any major problems and finished this short but tough rally in good positions. I would recommend a go at this event to anyone looking to move up from single-venue events to the forests as it is a great introduction to multi-venue forest rallying. Home | News / Info | Calendar | Event Reports | Photo Gallery | Rally Teams | Contacts | Links - Updated Sunday, 24 February, 2008 |
