I've saved my favourite photo till last
John
also co-drove for Colin McRae on his first ever rally. Jimmy, Colin’s dad, reckoned Colin might be
‘a bit useful’ but Ian Grindrod thought he was too close to the family to give
an unbiased opinion, so they asked John if he’d co-drive for Colin and report
back on how he rated young Colin. He
gave him at least 10 out of 10. I sometimes
wonder how history might have been different if, just for fun, John had come
back and said “He’s useless…”
On
another occasion John co-drove for BBC presenter Tiff Needell, a circuit racer
rather than a rally driver. On one forest bend Tiff dropped the inside wheel
into the ditch, lifted off, then drove out before continuing. John, unhappy at losing time, advised him
next time to just keep the accelerator down and drive through it, allowing the
car to ‘ditch-hook’. Which on the very
next stage, when the same thing happened, Tiff did. And ripped off the
suspension when they hit the huge tree root ¾ of the way round the bend!
We
had our heaviest roll ever just outside the old Calgary School (I must have had
an affinity to rolling outside school houses).
The accident started on the afternoon stages… from Dervaig we had a
non-competitive section through Glen Aros, and just as we left the village I
reached for my bottle of orange juice which was behind my seat. Distracted momentarily, I drifted left off
the road and clattered some rocks set in the verge, instantly puncturing both nearside tyres. We stopped to change them, but as the
afternoon drew on, a thick drizzle set in – and now I only had a full set of
dry weather tyres. After a hurried
search we found some tyres on wheels that would fit, but I wasn’t happy with
the grip.
Five
miles into the ‘long one’, the second night stage starting from Dervaig, the
car drifted wide on the medium-fast-right-over-crest just before Calgary School
house. At this point the side of the
road is shaped just like a skateboard park – the car was flipped up as it
rolled, landing really heavily on the driver’s door and ending upside-down
across the middle of the road. We both
managed to scramble out through the broken windscreen. I felt really sore. Spectators were soon running towards us,
surrounded the car, rolled it back on to its wheels, though not before holding
up John Cope’s Sierra Cosworth for more than a few seconds.
“I
think it’ll still go!” shouted one. “I
don’t think I will!” I replied. My side
really hurt. We sat, disconsolately, at
the roadside until the road-opening car passed.
They asked if I was OK and my answer was ‘Not really’. Some time later I was lying on the kitchen
table at the Bellachroy in Dervaig as one of the rally doctors gave me the once
over and announced that I’d either broken or cracked two ribs - it didn’t
matter which, as the cure’s the same for both.
Rest, a few paracetamols, and a whisky before bedtime. (We landed so
hard it was my elbow that broke the ribs.)
We’d hired a van from Rufus Carr, but I didn’t feel up to driving home. John and Alison Fisher, our next-door neighbours at the time, had come to Mull for John’s first attempt at the rally, and it was decided that Alison would drive the van back to Clitheroe with mum while John drove the rally car & trailer outfit, I’d go back with Dad, and Val and the children would drive... whatever was left, I can't remember! The van was only insured for me. John rang Peter Bryan from Rufus Carr, who we both knew well. If talking for England was an Olympic sport, Peter would have several gold medals by now. He started telling John that there might be complications connected with his request for Alison to drive the van. I’ll never forget listening to John as he cut across Peter, saying “Peter, it’s not a request. The ferry leaves before you get into work tomorrow, and Alison IS driving the van back to Clitheroe. So you need to sort it out. Got to go, ‘bye!”
The
car needed a new shell, but Hellifield Garage sorted it all out, re-shelled the
car (I now had a big-winged MkII for the first time ever!) I also had a 5-speed Sierra gearbox (never
had five gears before). Gordon
Birtwistle had found an electronic gizmo – commonplace now – which displayed a
series of lights so that you knew exactly when to change up, the big red light
meaning “If you haven’t changed up yet, DO IT NOW!” The speedo wasn’t at all accurate, but being
curious I worked out how fast we’d be going if the red light came on in 5th
– 123 mph.
On
the Gribun stage, we entered the straight that goes past the telephone box and
the ferry to Inch Kenneth. I’d thought it strange that there were at least two
of those little yumps (you know, the ones where the back wheels lift off the
ground and the engine note rises for a fraction of a second) when just before
the telephone box, in 5th gear, the red light came on. All I thought was ‘Dear God!’ – Terry
Harriman style…
One
earlier year, just past this point and no doubt doing around 100 mph, a huge
Red Deer stag suddenly appeared to the right, and almost stumbled on to the
road. I remember laying some serious
black lines on the road, then getting so close to the rear of the beast that I
had the most intimate view of its rather large genitals! I would guess that we got within 12”,
fortunately without making contact.
How
to tell a rally enthusiast from a Muilleach (someone who comes from Mull) – car
arrives at stage finish control with some damage. Spectators mill around. “What happened?” “We hit a deer!”
Rally
enthusiast – “Is the car OK?”
Muilleach
– “Where’s the deer?”
Our
last Mull rally was 1994. We were having
a pretty average run, when the gearbox started making strange noises and
clearly wasn’t well. We didn’t have a
spare, but Nick Considine asked around at Craignure service and by the time we
arrived, he’d borrowed a standard RS2000 4-speed box, which was fitted in just
over 20 minutes. As soon as we left
service I realised that this was just a ‘get you home’ box. First gear in a standard RS2000 is
unbelievably low. The gaps between the
ratios meant that – with a cammy engine – as you changed up at maximum revs from
one gear, the engine was off the cam in the next gear and a couple of seconds
passed with the engine spluttering, before it got back on the cam again.
But
we weren’t even going to make the finish.
Towards the end of the next Gribun stage, the gearlever came off in my
hands. In the haste of fitting it, the
nylon cup screw hadn’t been tightened fully.
I couldn’t get it back in for some reason, the engine stalled and
wouldn’t restart, and I just thought “We’re not meant to finish this year”.
It
was getting too difficult to keep a business going and rally once a year as
well. I told Dad I’d decided to call it
a day. His response was typical. At the age of 71, he said “Well, I’ll respect
your decision, but if ANYONE asks, it’s YOU that decided to retire, not me!”
Postscript.
Although
I almost wavered the following year, I knew I would never drive competitively
on rallies again. Mull did that to
me. Of all events, Mull seems to be the
one where years after people retire, they find they can afford to make a
comeback. Every year, old faces reappear
after a long absence. In the vast
majority of cases, drivers underestimate the damage a lay-off does, or
overestimate their capabilities, and they haven’t done enough miles either to
bed in themselves or the car. Most aspiring
comebacks end in breakdown, a crash, or a finish way down in the
also-rans. I suppose I’m just too
competitive. As soon as I retired I
realised this, and I also knew that none of the three outcomes would interest
me at all. There’s lots of other things
to do. Move forward. Never look back.
Not
that long ago I bumped into Keith Watkinson, who like many competitors of that
era is now in his seventies. He chuckled
as he told me that some of the drivers today call him a ‘has-been’. “What they don’t realise,” he said “is that
in order to be a has-been, you’ve got to have
been there. They can’t ever take that away from you!”
Wise
words – but I’ve saved the wisest till last, and as you can probably guess,
they came from Dad. Right at the start
of my rallying career, I remember him metaphorically taking me to one
side; “Whenever you get to the end of a
rally,” he said, “you’ll hear a lot of drivers and navigators talking a load of
bullshit. It’s called ‘Why we didn’t win.’ And there’ll be all kinds of reasons
– car not right, wrong tyres, held up by slower drivers, everything. Join in if you must (although I’d rather you
didn’t.) But when you get home, remember this – there’s only ONE reason you
didn’t win, and you have to admit it to yourself if no one else. Somebody
else was faster than you. It really
is as simple as that. You didn’t win
because you weren’t fast enough. And
until you realise that, you will never win, so learn it now – you win when you’re
the one who was faster than anyone else.
And
as Sergei would say, “Seemples”.
This series is dedicated to
that well-respected gentleman, often cantankerous, always conscientious, caring
but at times bloody-minded, humble but not always easy to get on with, certainly
not a sufferer of fools, Mr Frederick
Roy Honeywell (1923 – 2017).