Glorious Goodwood

Glorious Goodwood - What a laugh!! You should have seen it - Up to our necks in mud.

Enough of the whingeing. As most of you are now aware SCC were invited to run the Rallysprint stage at the Goodwood festival of speed this year, which was specially designed by that great rally stage designer Robbie Head.

As one of the many fools, sorry marshals, that were conned into going to this great event on, the promise of a free ticket and packed lunch for both Saturday and Sunday, I accepted. It's amazing what a I'll do for a cold sausage roll and a Mars bar. Off I went on Saturday morning to join in the fun. The only problem I had was that as I had just changed jobs. I was in between cars, and thus had one of those Nissan Micra kit cars with sequential (sorry) automatic gearboxes fitted. What a come-down from my Honda Prelude. Mind you I did find if you play the box the right way, you can out-drag a Morris Marina and I did get 90mph out of it along the A27 on Sunday, morning with the breeze behind me. You'll all be glad to know that this is not the sign of things to come and a nice new shiny car is due at the beginning of August which will probably soon see the trees. Watch out Brian Lyle.

I digress. Back to the rally sprint.

After joining the queue of traffic waiting to get in, I was promptly directed to the main service area by the car park attendants where the club's new caravan resplendent with the club flags gently fluttering in the breeze could be found. One advantage is that there is plenty of room to get in and you can get a hot cup of coffee for free. Just what the doctor ordered at 7.30 in the morning.

After signing on it was off to our prime vantage spot to sit and watch how the professionals do it. What a laugh. The first two runs were hilarious, for the spectators at least - you try driving at speed on wet grass. Mind you Steve Hill came prepared as he did his first run on snow tyres.

It really didn't help as the fastest cars were the F2 guys, as they had dry weather for their first run. Just as the four wheel brigade were about to start the stage the heavens opened which made life very interesting for them, and the later runners. Just ask Colin Early.

But this being the great British Summer it was only a heavy shower and after that the weather improved dramatically, to the extent that the track dried out and even became dusty. This made for better spectating for the crowds and marshals and get us all covered in dust plus a good sun tan into the bargain.

At the end of all the fun on Saturday the eventual winner was Robbie Head, down to some inside knowledge I dare say. But everyone enjoyed themselves which was the main thing, even though there were a few bent panels.

I can't say Sunday dawned fine as it didn't. I was woken at 4.00am with the rain bouncing off the roof of my friend's house at Hayling Island and after my leisurely drive along the A27 back to Goodwood it was time to enjoy the antics of the rally teams again, but this time in a sea of mud and slime.

Before Sunday's competition began two tractors and trailers arrived to take the drivers around the circuit to introduce them to the spectators. It would have probably been better if they had been given the tractors to use on the stage.

With all the rain that had come down during the early hours of the morning the paddock area and the rally stage resembled a scene from Black Adder Goes Forth. There was a rumour that Tony Jardine had caught trench foot while walking from his car to the club caravan.

Things kicked off on time but right on cue the heavens opened. This wasn't one of your light showers but a tropical storms with wind, horizontal rain and the odd lightning bolt and rumble of thunder to add to the fun.

Needless to say the stage times were getting slower and slower as the cars were trying to get traction. The rain was coming down so fast it was running straight off rather than soaking into the ground and turned the mud into something that resembled a very weak mixture of concrete which stuck to the cars' tyres. With all the rain running off the track there was now the added attraction of a water splash at the bottom of the hill just before the stage start.

The weather didn't get any better. The stage conditions got worse and worse and the marshals got wetter and wetter, plus covered in mud every time they had to push a car back onto the track from out of the straw bales. With the state of the stage and the rain coming down even harder the decision was made at the lunch halt to have one more timed stage and then call it quits. Just about all of the teams agreed to this but there was a couple who took their balls home because it was too slippy.

I wonder what would happen if the conditions were the same when they were competing on a British Championship round ?

Anyway back to the fun. All of the teams that remained completed the last stage in some form or another and kept the crowds happy as the rally stage was the only thing that was still running in the rain. This produced an new winner for Sunday in the form of David Higgins and an overall winner for the weekend of Marcus Dodd .

All that remained was for the drowned rats (marshals) to dismantle the stage and boy was that fun. Everything was caked in mud and someone is going to have fun sorting out the tape as it is now a brown colour rather than the usual red and white stripes. Wear old clothes next time you come down to the Heathside when we roll up the tape.