80's road rallying

[alancdavis]

I think they get away with it by being deemed a navigational event

[Tim]

arent they all set to a maxium average speed of 30mph

[paul andrews]

they was when i stopped in the mid 90's when i stopped but only done a few nationals tim.used to love um

[plentysideways]

and the problem was ????

I couldnt keep up

[plentysideways]

So how do they time night rallies nowadays (such as the recent Cilwendig) now that targa timing has been banned?

You could fill a book answering that.

Schedule/BBC timing ie the clocks tell the correct time of day (unlike targa timing), set to a30 mph average MAXIMUM on the public highway

[driverace]

road rallies

Most of the events we did were in Yorkshire,Lancashire ,Cumbia,humberside (Clitheronion,St Wilfreds,Penine,CD Bramall etc)
One of the guys who was quite fast,and always seeded just inside the top ten,either used his company Rep car ,or a hire car,he had a spare set of wheels he used to bolt on just to do events.
Cyril Bolton ,Peter Smith,Keith Watkinson,Bryan Harper,Derek Carless,were a few of the local names that come to mind

[Brynmor Pierce]

I must be honest i'm guessing not many on this thread actually compete now on night events?
I'm not going to divulge much but the speed is an AVERAGE, large chunks of route are on farm tracks/fields etc and the spec of cars is somewhat advanced of what was used in the last year of motoring news events in 1987....
The main difference is the timing in some ways and also the use of more passage controls.
Go and have a look on a Welsh event now and maybe have a go, you'd probably enjoy yourselves.

[KL]

Another myth that needs to be put to bed is that the spec of road rally cars gradually got higher until it was a problem. Full works cars (loaned to works drivers) regularly competed in road rallying up to the late 60s - and were far more spectacular than in the Escort era simply because the road holding was worse. I'm angry and frustrated that I missed all that - and particularly the "anything goes" road rally regs up to 65.
There was a distinct "dip" in average road rally car specs around the time of the Mexico championship - it showed ultimate cars weren't necessary or appropriate. It got "worse" again in the run up to the big change for 88. It had actually got "worse" too when the regs banned racing tyres. Michelin TB15s would last more than one rally. As Driverace has pointed out, 8 Avon CR28s (before the indistinguishable soft ones were even called "Sport") would be carried by top competitors and 6 woulod be shot at the finish.
Read the "history" section of the Bulldog Rally web site - early 60s when it was the Express and Star - to get a feel for the "go anywhere" era.

[plentysideways]

If I compare the last road event I competed on (two months ago) to events in the 80s the main differences would be

There is far more for a navigator to do nowadays. There are a lot more controls on today's events as it is a way of making crews take a longer time to cover a set distance. The closest together you are allowed to site two time controls is 2 miles, the fastest average speed is 30 mph so 4 minutes have to be allowed to cover this section. This sounds quite easy until you realise there are three passage (which are untimed) controls all at junctions which have triangles on them which have to gone around the long way and/or you have to go into a farmyard and follow a prescribed route around the farm (usually given to you as a diagram by the organisers as part of the route instructions).All these measures combine to make it impossible to cover the section in the allowed time. Sometimes the people manning the pasage controls may have been instructed to make sure it takes them at least 20 seconds to sign your time card (whoopps there goes at least 1 of your 4 minutes). Back "in the old days" a navvy would have to cope with maybe changing maps during a selective, todays may have to cope with several shets of diagrams as well as the maps. This is what Phil Mills was referring to when he said he couldnt get over the amount of information he had to give to his driver on the Cilwendeg.

Nowadays competent crews will be penalty free on quite afew of the sections, whereas it was very rare to clean a selective in the old days

Quite a bit of route on some rallies is on private land (fields and farm tracks etc) in the present which can have quite an effect on the distance between two points on the public highway (and therefors the average speed)

The standard of cars. Hmmm, could be a bit of a minefield this one. In my opinion, the general standard of preparation has dropped over the last 20 or so years. There are some very very well built and maintained cars competing today and some of these do have technology on them which simply wasnt available 20 years ago, but they are no better prepared or built than the top cars were in the 80s. However, there are some cars presented at scrutineering today which I wouldnt want to drive to the shops in, let alone do a rally in.

Results seem to take longer now computors are used rather than "the washing line" method ( and protests and mistakes sem to be more common)

I need a kip on Sundays to get over it all these days

What hasnt changed though, is the amount of fun which is had, the cameraderie between crews, the value for money, and the fantastic grounding it gives for navigators.

Really, road rallying has evolved along with the times and some things are a bit different but the main theme is two of you in a car, going as quick as you can all night trying to win and having "the craic" while your at it

[CHELT RS]

I can remember competing on 1 rally on the Cotswolds that ran a 48 mile selective with just few passage controls and still nobody cleaned it such was the speed set by the organisers. With the old targa timming it was so easy to do.
I was talking to someone who used to organise road rallies in the eighties and he told me it was not uncommon to set times which required averages in excess of 70 mph to clean. Understandably few cleans were posted even on the 'motorways' of the Cotswolds.
I loved every minute of my road rally days and would love to have another go but I think age (too much) and nerve(too little) would see me blown to the weeds within 5 miles of the start so memories it will have to be.

Phil.

[CHELT RS]

[QUOTE=plentysideways;507786]If I compare the last road event I competed on (two months ago) to events in the 80s the main differences would be

There is far more for a navigator to do nowadays. There are a lot more controls on today's events as it is a way of making crews take a longer time to cover a set distance. The closest together you are allowed to site two time controls is 2 miles, the fastest average speed is 30 mph so 4 minutes have to be allowed to cover this section. This sounds quite easy until you realise there are three passage (which are untimed) controls all at junctions which have triangles on them which have to gone around the long way and/or you have to go into a farmyard and follow a prescribed route around the farm (usually given to you as a diagram by the organisers as part of the route instructions).All these measures combine to make it impossible to cover the section in the allowed time. Sometimes the people manning the pasage controls may have been instructed to make sure it takes them at least 20 seconds to sign your time card (whoopps there goes at least 1 of your 4 minutes). Back "in the old days" a navvy would have to cope with maybe changing maps during a selective, todays may have to cope with several shets of diagrams as well as the maps. This is what Phil Mills was referring to when he said he couldnt get over the amount of information he had to give to his driver on the Cilwendeg.

This seems to be very different to the old says. We used to have 2 hours to plot 1 full scap (aka A4) of map references then the navs used to go into a huddle to make sure we all had the same route.
Then it was just a case if your nav was good enough, and you trusted him, he would just call the bends off the map or in the case of a well used road pace notes. 200 miles in the lanes flat out. What better way to spend a Saturday night.

As said before by this time the cars were getting very fast. Not that uncommon to have Escorts producing 170/180 brake from their '2 litre' engines on split Webers.
Mine was completely standard so when I managed to beat these road rockets,which wasn't very often, made me very happy.

[Tim]

whilst watchin ralio last night,selective kept being metioned but what are they

[Mark P]

Road rallies

I was lucky enough to catch the last few years to started in 1985 but only did smaller events around andover, devizes, cheddar gorge and quite a few down into devon great times but when all the rules changed we went onto stage rallies but couldnt do as many due to the cost
trying to put up a copuple of images bet they are to big dont know how to convert them

[CHELT RS]

whilst watchin ralio last night,selective kept being metioned but what are they

Selectives were sections timed to the second AKA stages on private land.

[graham John]

whilst watchin ralio last night,selective kept being metioned but what are they

basically they were the 'special stages' of road rallying so to speak Tim

cheeRS