Flanders International Rally Challenge 2014 -2 Rallies in 2 weekends

Part 2 : GEKO Rally Wervik

A total of 134 crews , including 39 Historics lined up for the 40th running of the Wervik Rally (pic1). We had some interesting competition in the up to 1300cc class with 2 Belgian Minis and a beautifully prepared 1975 Simca Rallye 2, which is quite a rarity these days and not seen in the UK. Henry Hardiment made a welcome return in his well rallied Cooper S “353 ACE” with my last year’s co driver Derek Webb in the hot seat, both of them living in the same Norfolk village.

The forecast was warm and dry and we were eagerly looking forward to the class battle and also our fight for FIRC honours with Keith Pettit’s Escort, with our refettled Lucas distributor fitted hopefully giving us a trouble free run.

A feature of rallying in Belgium is the practice of cutting the corners to reduce the severity of the bends and with the modern cars greater ground clearance most bends are tackled this way, but it does leave a lot of gravel on the road to catch out the unwary. Two examples of cuts are illustrated in the following pictures (pic 2 and 3). The first a mild cut , the second we are completely off the tarmac ! A very strong sump guard is needed especially on a Mini.

The rally follows the same format each year with 3 stages run in 4 loops totalling 12 stages 90kms in total. This year SS1 and 3 were run in the opposite direction and SS2 “Wervik”with its 2 laps was changed slightly.

At the start on Saturday morning Henry’s mini was leaving an ominous cloud from the exhaust and he retired almost immediately with a suspected blown head gasket. Poor return for all the effort of going to Belgium!

Looking at the stage times after the first loop of 3 stages a pattern was already established. Keith’s Escort and our Mini were swapping times, the Simca was beating us generally by 3 to 4 seconds per stage, the black mini(pic4) of Sieben Vandevyver was about 10 to 15 seconds slower than us , and the white 1380 mini of Cathelin Neyens was well off the pace and being caught by us on the stage. They were to retire after Stage 5 with no 2nd gear. At lunch we were 6 seconds ahead of the Escort on stage times but a one minute late arrival at the regroup cost us 10 seconds.

As we improved our stage times to try and match the Simca of Karel Verschuere and Ruben Boudrez (pic 5) they went even faster and achieved a superb class win just over a minute ahead of us at the end. Their cornering style in the rear engine Simca was very different to our Mini, (see pics 6 and 7). They were clearly trying!

We continued to battle all afternoon with the Escort but could not pull back the road penalty loss and finished 10 seconds behind at the finish, but our 2nd in class was a good result for the Minispares Mini behind the flying Simca.

Thanks to the Belgian photographers: www.rallydigital.be , Xavier Mahieux, Jan005, Bert Verstraete ,others by author.

Peter Horsburgh