Another weekend, another rally – although really this is my first of the year! Never done a tarmac stage before, so this non-spectator event in the grounds of Weston Park sounded like a perfect opportunity to get some practice in.
The AGBO Rally started as a road rally, organised by members of the Owen Motoring Club. During the 1960s and 1970s it quickly grew in stature, being awarded the Silver Star by Motoring News as one of the best road championships. During the early 1980s, the event switched to a stage rally at Wilbarston Airfield (formerly RAF Desborough), though soon moved to the Weston Park estate.
The house was built in 1671 for Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham. Weston, the House and 1,000 acres of Capability Brown Parkland was gifted to the nation in 1986 by the 7th Earl of Bradford, with the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. It is now in the care of the trustees of the Weston Park Foundation.
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A comparatively late start of 0630 and a 90 minute drive down to Weston Park – PMR446 radios are great for inter-car communication with your mates by the way – arriving just in time for the first couple of cars to go through stage 1.
Having never been before, it was a case of making it up as we went along. Throughout the day, the weather was changeable to say the least! We had cloud, then rain, then warm sunshine, then rain again, then sunshine, then hail(!), then sunshine and a bit more rain, ending the day with brilliant clear skies and a lovely sunset on the drive home.
The rally consisted of 5 classes for 2 wheel drive vehicles, with no four wheel drive vehicles allowed:
- Class A – Cars up to and including 1400 cc
- Class B – Cars 1401 cc and up to 1600 cc
- Class C – Cars 1601 cc and up to 2000 cc
- Class D – Cars over 2000 cc
- Class E – Historic category
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Although officially a non-spectator event, Weston Park itself is opened and for a £10 car park fee, you are able to walk around the ground and, by happy coincidence, photograph the cars on the stages.
Seventy-five cars were seeded for the event, and all but one competed in at least one stage. By the end of the event, 65 cars had completed the rally, and not including the two stages that were cancelled due to the incident involving car number 50 requiring the driver and co-driver to be rescued from the vehicle and taken away by ambulance, all stages were run.
A mix of gravel, tarmac and mud stages are run, with obstacles such as cattle grids, narrow gates and straw bales creating chicanes really testing the skills of the drivers and co-drivers. This year it also seemed that the organisers were big fans of hairpins, with a couple of very tight ones included!
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Following the incident with car number 50 and the break that ensued, it was decided that lunch would be brought forward and extended, giving us and opportunity to walk back to the car park and have a quick spot of lunch also.
As the sun moved round through the day, it became apparent that the angles I was hoping to use in some of the corners wouldn’t work in the afternoon, but luckily a little bit of cloud cover meant that – for a short while at least – it was able to shoot what would otherwise have been straight in to sun!
One corner, a 90° left, was almost completely covered in loose gravel and mud, so positioning in line with the exit of the corner allowed for a few shots of cars getting out of line as they applied power.
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As the cloud cover moved, moving to the inside of the bend created some nice opportunities with cars cutting the corner a little too early and running in to the straw set up on the inside.
More changeable weather conditions at this point meant that the sun that was causing the issues went, and in its place arrived strong winds and hail! Thankfully stood with our backs to the hail meant photography was still possible, however the sheer volume of the hail means the shots are almost worthless, there’s more hail than car in some of the pictures!
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Whereas the morning stages start at the pits and run out towards the far end of the Weston Park grounds, the afternoon stages run the reverse – and quite near the start there is a cattle grid that, in previous years, has caught out many a driver due to a large dip in the road just before the grid. There are pictures on Flickr of cars airborne and landing, front bumper-first, some way further down the road!
Sadly this year that had been addressed and a large bale of straw was positioned on the inside of the bend to force cars over in to the flatter, safer, area. Good for the cars and their crews, not so good for photographers. Nonetheless, we tried this position and got a few cars who pushed a little bit harder than the rest and lifted the back end! Of these photos, only the Citroen AX driven by Andrew and Phil Saunders is massively noticeable – there’s a lot of suspension travel in that car!
The penultimate stage, as it became, saw us move around towards the outer edges of the park, where cars were being driven flat out over another cattle grid before slowing in to the chicane complex by the main entrance.
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The final stage, then, included perhaps the tightest hairpin corner I’ve seen, well over 100°, closer to 180 in fact! This caused some issues for larger cars, and those that either didn’t pull the handbrake soon enough, or even not at all.
As it was the final stage, all drivers were pushing their cars to the absolute limit and trying to make up as much time as possible – sometimes getting the corner spot on, and sometimes either ending up on the grass on the exit of the corner or very, very sideways and losing time trying to correct.
Some front-wheel drive cars avoided the hairpin completely and took to the grass, avoiding the straw, others drove straight over it!
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And with that, the day was over and time to head back up to Manchester!
The seeded entry list can be found here and the final results here. Congratulations to Oliver and Ben Davies for coming first outright with a final time of 26 minutes and 30 seconds in their Ford Escort Mk.2! A full list of award winners is here.
