Flanders International Rally Challenge 2014 -2 Rallies in 2 weekends

Part 1 : ORC Canal Rally

After a break of 9 months since the Isle of Man rally in September last year we started the year with the ORC Canal Rally on 1st June and the Geko Rally Wervik on 14th June, both in Belgium located about 15km east of Ypres.

David Smalley (pic 1) joined me again for the Canal Rally in the usual Minispares Cooper S “277 BRX”. A wedding prevented him from doing Wervik and I was co driven on that one by Graham Carter who has rallied with me before in Flanders and the Isle of Man.

After the distributor problems on IOM last year we had at the last minute arranged for Swiftune to prep a 40819 Lucas for the Canal rally ,but after the donor unit was damaged in the post and it did not arrive until after the rally , we ran with last year’s Aldon version for the first round.

Our main competition on the first round was the Mk1 Mexico of Keith Pettit and James McCullough. The format was identical to 2013 with the same 3 stages run 4 times each during the day with dry pleasant conditions.We ran with the Avon ZZ’s tyres as there was the threat of rain and they are equally good wet, damp or dry.

We were 2 seconds slower than the Escort on SS1 ,but the distributor problems reared their head again with a loose points spring shorting inside and losing us many minutes on SS2 and 3.We did a bodge to get back to service where Spen effected a permanent fix which worked fine for the rest of the rally.

For the rest of the rally we took time out of the Escort on every stage (pic 2) , but our early time loss was too much and Keith in the Escort backed off towards the end as his diff was playing up and he wanted a finish.

We did manage a class win (pic3) and our trip was not in vain as we returned with a car full of Belgium’s best ! (pic4)

Peter Horsburgh