26 - The last hurrah

I've saved my favourite photo till last

By now I was working hard to make the business a success.  John Meadows, my longest-serving navigator, was having great success in Internationals with the Mitsubishi Rally Team and his driver, Kenjiro Shinozuka.  Together they won two rounds of the World Rally Championship – consecutive Ivory Coast Rallies – something that even avid fans of the WRC sometimes seem to forget.

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 5^th – 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 5^th 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).