Donaldson Fuels Rally 2012

Friday night (30 Mar 2012) was the 3nd event of the NI Night Rally Challenge and this time we where up near Cookstown with the rally running out of the Braeside Bar. Paddy McCollum again showed off his Powerpoint skills and did a great job of talking everyone through the final navigation rally school. All new competitors should now have all the information they need to work out any route instructions they receive on a navigation rally. The next step is to teach them how to correctly judge their timing which will be covered in the rally schools after the traditional navigation rally summer break.
Rachel and I were out manning a couple of secret controls so didn't get to drive the route but the feeling from everyone back at the bar was very positive. From our controls it seemed like the crews had a much better handle on things than they had the first night out on the road and almost everyone was close to being on their minute.

 It is very interesting to see that the top 3 crews all had lady navigators. In general women are under represented in motorsport so it is great to have such an influx of good lady navigators at our grass roots level, hopefully they can encourage some lady drivers to come out too.

With this years beginner rallies going down very well with all the competitors I don't think that the sport itself has anything to worry about in the future. I think that the biggest thing that is keeping the entries low is that not enough people know about the sport so with a few big motorsport events over the summer hopefully we can get out and raise awareness with the wider public.

Results

1st Place, 0 Penalties, Andy Hughes and Kerry Moreland.

2nd Place, 0 Penalties, Neil Anderson and Kathryn Vaux.

3rd Place, 3 Penalties, Laura Fletcher and Neil Fletcher.

Donaldson Fuels Nav Rally 2011

Unfortunately last nights round of the NI navigation rally championship was cancelled due to a lack of entries. I didn't do the rally last year but it seems to be the general feeling from people that I've talked to that the event was not well run and this may be the cause of the low number of entries for this year. Hopefully this will be the last event to be cancelled as we haven't scored well on the 2 rounds that have run and with fewer events left it's going to be hard to catch Davy McElroy/Clive Latimer who have won the class on both times.