07/02/2024
The Taunton Rally 2024
Firstly, a big thank you to James How, Nic Jones, Zac Linham, Lucas Redwood, Pat Thomas, PR crews and the list I’m sure should go on and on from Taunton Motoring Club. The excellent start/finish venues and of course most importantly the army of marshals that came to help, our massive thanks from ourselves and I am sure all the competitors.
Onto our night and what an exciting event we had, the start of selective 1, using some familiar lanes/whites to Dad, or so he told me. All pretty new to me and off we set, all seemed to be going well and up onto the top of famous Bampton Down, down the other side towards Bampton to our first and only real wrong slot of the night. Now for the rest of the section we had angry driver mode! moaning and muttering that he should have remembered that better, but soon came out with the excuses that he hadn’t been that way around for a very long time. Anyway, it seemed many others had the same ‘issue’, so in the end not too bad and a slim lead at the end of the section.
Onto selective 2 and things felt good with some good section times, allowing us to slightly extend our lead. Using some fantastic lanes to the southern side of Oakford.
Selective 3 was all a bit excited at the start! This led to a committed section through some very slippery/muddy and very much not as mapped section, fastest time through the first two-mile section and things were really starting to work in the car. That is until the next section, I still struggle to understand firstly how we cleaned it by so much for me to make the error! A very foggy section climbing up to the moor and five cross ways, picking up the pc. Then across the common road to Anstey Burrows. Somehow, I managed to book us in 2 minutes early, eroding some of our hard earnt lead to that point, sorry dad! Some good sections followed, as is normally the case following an error and dad in a progressive mood! Then entering a NAM RC with a little too much excitement the front wheels dropped into a very small ditch. I was soon encouraged to get out and push, but I tried but it wasn’t coming out, so out gets dad to help push and probably would have been very funny for anyone to have seen what happened next. But we will just say that car was out of the ditch and firmly planted in the hedge behind. So, in a hurry to get back in and get going again, maps, timecards all over the floor and my tidy office system all upside down with dad’s progressive mood now gone up a few levels! Down through Sheepwash ford (that was deep!) and along some fast roads that dad knows well, then came my next timing error, I’d misread the marshals handwriting for the previous time control and we waited outside the board for what I thought was the correct due time, only to realise later that we were on our due time and shouldn’t have waited, another 2mins. So, to the end of the first half a bit disappointed to be back in third, just over 30 seconds off the leading crew James Appleby/Sam Treleaven.
So, we started selective 4 and the second half with a positive approach, the leading crew unfortunately retired early on, which led to a three-way battle between ourselves, Phil Harris/Liam Burns and Lewis Clark/Oliver Luxton. We pushed on and continued to make good progress and managed to get back into the lead over the extremely foggy moorland sections. We had managed to clip a bank/stone and knock the tracking out, so the remaining selectives the tyres were started to get very tired, and our pace needed to adjust back a bit for the rest of the event. Then a small error on a LWR route check board on the moorland section to Pool Bridge cost us vital minutes trying to get out of the wrong white road.
We got to the end with a hard earnt 2nd place, with Lewis and Oler taking the win and Phil/Liam close behind in third (full results on MTC1).
An enjoyable and competitive nights rallying, albeit a little disappointed to lose it in the end. But well done to all the competitors, even Lewis & Oler! and we will certainly try again next year.
Thank you.
Phillip and Edward Luxton – car 2, any pics or videos send them my way 😉
