Robin Hood Forest Stages Rally - Sunday 5th March 2006 By Matt Rudd

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As usual the Robin Hood Rally was split into 2 main categories; the Robin Hood Historic Forest Stages and the Robin Hood Forest Stages Rally. As well as having many stages on the Sunday, the Historic event also had 3 night stages on the Saturday. The Historic event was the opening round for this year's British Historic Rally Championship and therefore did include many top names on the entry list.

These included previous BHRC champions, Dessie Nutt and Steve Perez. Other top crews included Patrick Watts, who is an ex British Touring Car driver and local ace Charlie Taylor was also out on the event.

We also expected the rallying legend of Jimmy McRae (father of the extremely famous Colin McRae) however before the event his car suffered gearbox problems forcing him to retire before the event had even started. With this being a historic event it did mean there were some outstanding looking cars, for example the Sunbeam Tiger, the Mini Cooper and of course, not forgetting the beautiful Lancia Stratos.

The modern event didn't disappoint either in terms of the cars and drivers. Top drivers included last year's winner Kevin Procter in his Subaru which he also used to take victory on the Riponian Stages.

Another previous winner, Bob Morgan was also entered. James Wozencroft (British Rally Champion - Stars of the Future category) was also in the event but this time he was in the co-driver's seat with Tom Walster in the immaculate Ford Fiesta. Unfortunately, like last year, I could only attend the Sunday of the event but obviously then you get both the Historic and Modern competitors, so it's a great concoction. For the morning stages we were on the Blidworth Stage.

First on the road were the Historic class cars lead by Patrick Watts. Patrick as usual was very smooth around the tight right where we were positioned. Graham Waite was much more entertaining in the Volvo Amazon, getting the car very sideways on the exit. After a few more cars there was a five minute gap before both the Post Historic and Classic categories came on the stage.

The first car was the Stobart backed Escort of Mark Solloway who was certainly on the pace. David Stokes was another driver to get extremely sideways on the corner. Steve Perez looked amazing around the corner in the Stratos. Car 317, Terry Brown was very sideways around the corner but this was due to a tyre problem; his back tyre was coming off the wheel.

Then a few cars later Keith Cornell joined me on the banking after getting the corner wrong forcing me to move rather fast and as a result I did get lots of close up photos of the car's side. After a couple more cars we moved to the previous corner on the stage where Dessie Nutt did go wide into the corner. We then had a good ten minutes to find a place for the modern rally.

In doing this, we found the stricken Escort Mexico of Kevin Broadhurst on the exit on the next corner. He had lost his rear tyre and spectators were lifting the car off the track. Their efforts were in vain as a couple of minutes later a 4x4 came to move the car a bit further. This was therefore 4 years in a row that Kevin hadn't finished the event

Continued..... Next Page

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