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Visual Packaging Cossack Rally 2003
The best road rally in the ANCC championship and probably one of the
best rallies nationally. About 140
miles of lanes and whites, plus 4 laps of an airfield ! Very well organised and
generally excellent !
The Cossack is run annually by Eastwood and District Motor Club, based at Grantham in Lincolnshire, and was held this year on 1st/2nd November on a fairly mild but rainy night. The Cossack enjoys a reputation as a fairly awesome event, particularly popular with drivers, but also having some notoriety for extensive use of muddy and sometimes rough unsurfaced tracks ("whites" in road rally jargon, as this is how they are shown on the map).
I had once attempted the Cossack back in 2001, in the wake of the foot and mouth crisis and following a gap of more than a year from doing any road rallies. That had been a frustrating experience - I had co-driven in an old 205 gti which was my own car and had been standing in the garden unused for 8 months, and suffered drive shaft failure which forced retirement at about the half-way point. Despite this, we would probably have gone OTL due to excessively long and muddy whites and my own lack of recent practice in plotting. More recently, I have done a few ANCC rounds both this year and last, with somewhat mixed results. With this dubious track record, it was with some trepidation that I persuaded Alastair Crosby to team up for the Cossack, thus furthering Selby MC's assault on the ANCC road rally championship.
The vehicle of choice was Alastair's pug 205 1.6 gti - apparently assempled from a couple of scrap donor carcasses and other breaker's yard bargains - but a very reliable and willing little car non-the-less. In standard trim and without sump guard we would of course be disadvantaged on the whites, but expected to be able to keep up on the rest of the lanes. The pre-event paperwork and website was all delivered to a very good standard, and there was evidence of very high standards of organisation and preparation by a very able team throughout. The only small glitch was a missing handout for the non-competitive run out from the start, though Grantham, to NTC2 - we had the control's reference but had to make up our own route through the town.
The event then kicked-off in ernest. The first section was straightforward, while the second led us onto Barkston Heath airfield - a work of genius by the organisers ! A marked map indicated the route around the airfield's very wide and fast perimeter roads, including merge and split points so as to accommodate double-usage of at least half the lap, and with passage control points located on the single-usage section. Following the split, the arrowed route led back onto public road and a sprint down to the Time Control. We had been delayed by a queue at the previous control and this contributed to us dropping over 3 minutes. There followed a very conventional series of road sections, including some short non-competitive runs through villages etc. and using straightforward navigation. In some cases this was quite difficult to plot - for example plotting six 8-figure grid references within a region of less than a kilometre, while being bounced around on rough roads, can be very difficult to say the least, but precision is vital to avoid missing a code board or entering a control the wrong way. Then came some of the infamous whites and the first car in a ditch; it having apparently fallen off the road on a straight. The whites were managable, but speed lead to a high risk of damage in a standard car and I was not surprised that there were no minis making up the 60 car entry.
As the first half progressed we dropped time steadily, but also had some opportunity to make up a few minutes, and were not uncomfortably close to going OTL. The second half progressed in a similar fashion although our penalties were less on the second time card. Suprisingly, we made a second visit to the airfield, and despite the familiarity the racing line was still not too easy to discern through the darkness and rain. The large expanses of space were quite deceiving to the eye (especially to Alastair's) and I had to shout directions and braking points as we approached each apex. Increasing confidence saw us just touch the ton, and I estimated we had dropped about a minute less than on the previous visit.
At some point the car's sump had taken a bad impact on a white, apparently not leading to obvious oil loss, but later leading to eratic oil pressure on the run home 1. Fortunately this was the only damage or mishap of the night. Following the final competitive control there was a slightly tedious 20 mile run to the finish venue on the A1 some way to the south of the rally's starting point. The results were still being processed when we left following a brief breakfast, but from the information available I estimated we would be placed about 28th, not bad compared to our seeded number as car 37. Checking the website (see below) the following Monday I was pleased to see that our classification was 26th 2, having dropped just over 26 minutes but remaining free of fails.
The winners, Guy Robinson and Charles Wheeldon, dropped 5 minute 4 seconds which looks like a reasonable winners' penalty, and the top 43 crews were also free of fails, so I would say that the level of difficulty was probably set about right. It is of course very difficult for organisers to put on an event which is well suited to both the best expert crews, and also novices, but I think the Cossack team got it right this year. Other nice touches were fund-raising for the Linclonshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance, and an award for the best marshalled control.
Report by John Thornton.
November 2003
1. The motor was later found to
be a write-off !
2. We were later classified 27th