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Get Connected! Carless Fuels Wyedean Forest Rally 2008

The Get Connected! Carless Fuels Wyedean Forest Rally was the first round of the 2008 Formula 1000 Forest Championship. 6 Crews left Chepstow Racecourse to venture in the 44 Stages miles within the Forest of Dean as well a quick sprint around the Chepstow racecourse stage before service. The first challenge was a 6 mile stage round Chepstow Park. This would be Lewis Roper’s first time in the woods. Lewis the Tarmac Class A Championship from 2007 made a change from the Tarmac to Forest for 2008 at the wheel of his ever sideways MK1 Micra. Lewis comment after driving his first ever forest stage, “ First stage was a bit of a nightmare, having never driven on forest tyres before I was a bit early on my brakes, and I’m not used to all the noise in the car which was distracting me from Chris calling out the pacenotes to me, so almost went the wrong way at one point. I also got caught by a 1400 106 that I had to take to the verge to give them enough room to pass which lost me a lot of time.  Chepstow Park was a really test to start off, as recent regarding work within the forest provided a tricky and rough test for all the crews. First blood went to Alistair Sutherland who was 22 seconds ahead of Nigel Humphreys.
  8 miles of Serridge lay ahead of the F1000 crews. If the slippery condition wasn’t enough a tarmac section with speed bumps was thrown in to challenge the F1000 crews even more.  Nigel Humphreys in his Nissan Micra set a blistering time a full 39 seconds ahead of Alistair Sutherland and a over a minute in front of Dan Gray  and Will Rogers in there Micra. Nigel also set the quickest time in his class of 1.4C by 11 seconds. This quick time didn’t come with out it sacrifices. Nigels co-driver Simon Rogers suffered back pain and toothache after a heavy landing over a bad bump dip, which the Micra  they were in flew 4-6ft in the air according to Nigel, Simon commented more like 2ft.
  Stage 3 was a 6 miles though the Sallowvallets stage. This very slippery stage saw Alistair take back 13 seconds from Nigel. The crews then headed back to Chepstow Racecourse for the short Piercefield Stages around the race course. All the crews made it though this very short stage unscathed except for the Nigel Humphreys. Entering the 2nd chicane a bit to quick, led to his Micra leaving the stage with a slightly bent front nearside wing. The Hour long service allowed the crews to check over their cars and take refreshment on board as well as a F1000 doughnut, before the afternoon stages As the crews left service for the largest stage of the day, 10 miles though Speech House, Nigel Humphreys lead Alistair Sutherland by 1 seconds with the rest of the F1000 crews 2 minutes behind.
   Speech House provide to be very entertaining for all the crews as the marble like gravel on every corner lead to some very sideways action from all the crews especially the top two crews of Nigel Humphreys / Simon Rogers and Alistair Sutherland / Gill Cotton. The crews had some close calls as some Scandinavian Flicks but on by Humphreys sent the spectators jumping out of the way, luckily it went according to plan and the Micra made it out of the corner. Both Alistair Sutherland and Lewis Roper made it out of SS5 minus a few parts. A rear bumper was missing from Sutherlands Micra and Ropers Mk1 Micra was short of a Mudlfap and a side light which had been claimed by one of the many tree braches close to the stage.
Stage 6 was a re-run of stage 2 with a slight different section towards the end.
  As the stage was run earlier on in the day  some of the corners had began t cut up with some deep ruts which didn’t help the F1000 crews needless to say all 6 made it though this challenging stage of gravel and tarmac. By now Alistair Sutherland had pulled away from Nigel Humphreys by 24 seconds. Nigel and Simon had began to notice a distinct lack of power in the Micra at the top end of the Micras’ power during the afternoon.
Mailscot was the final stage of the rally. After a few major sideways moments during SS7, Humphreys and Rogers couldn’t gain back the 24 seconds they had lost during the earlier afternoon stages infact they lost a further 17 seconds thanks to the unknown power lose in the car. All 6 F1000 crews made it out of the last stage in one piece. Another 100% finishing record for F1000. Sutherland added at the finish control , “ Its been a great days rallying, condition were perfect and the competition from the other F1000 was great especially from Nigel who had a one second lead over us at service”.

A huge Thank You goes to the whole team at the Forest of Dean Motor Club for organising the event and supplying Formula 1000 with class awards. Thank You to all the Marshals on all the stages.
Results:
1st – Alistair Sutherland/Gill Cotton – 55 mins 25 secs
2nd – Nigel Humphreys/Simon Rogers -  56 mins 6 secs
3rd – Dan Gray/Will Rogers - 59mins 1 sec
4th – Lewis Roper/Chris Sheridan – 1 hr 1 min 38 secs
5th – Matt Griffin/James Fisher – 1 hr 4 mins 24 secs
6th – Des Fletcher/Phil Spilsted – 1 hr 4 mins 39 secs    

Read about Formula 1000 and it's history - Part 1

25th March 2007

I remember sitting in Graham Middleton's office early in 2003 when the news came through that the Rally of Wales had been cancelled. Although this was very bad news it was not entirely unexpected as at the time rallying was suffering badly with many events struggling for entries.

Within a month the situation as I saw it had become far more serious. Club events were at risk with some being cancelled and others running at a loss. Remove the club events and there is no entry point for the sport – something had to be done! At the time I was supplying David Winstanley with tyres for events such as the World Cup Rally. These rallies catered for cars built to what is now known as Enduro spec, so basically standard and with 2 classes these being up to 1400cc and up to 1000cc. My first thought was what do the 1000cc cars do when they aren't on the World Cup Rally? Perhaps if 5 or 6 could be persuaded out to compete on single venue rallies that might be enough to save an event or 2. Then I thought if they could have their own class it would be a really cheap way into stage rallying and maybe a couple of people might build cars. The best way to get a class was to have a chat with Dave Thomas of the ANWCC who fortunately supported the idea straight away and even suggessted the idea of starting a club. Of course if there were only a handful of cars there would be no point in forming a club so I indulged in a bit of market research even bravely proposing the idea on the British Rally Forum. On reflection playing with weapons grade Plutonium is probably safer, however on this occasion there was an instant massive amount of support and several people came on board to help aside from Alistair who is a captive audience. These included Clive Baty who took on the poisoned chalice of defining technical regulations and in the early days Steve Moore who did a fine job of raising finance.

Late in 2003 we completed a car and tried it on the Keith Wood stages at 3 Sisters in Wigan. The specification then has stayed constant to this day, a basic sub 1000cc car with all the required safety equipment and good suspension coupled with standard running gear and control tyres.

I thought that as an affordable route into rallying it would be fairly unexciting but better than not competing. The big surprise was how much fun it was and beating bigger engined cars is always a bonus.

In the next part I'll outline how the first full season was planned.

Tristan Dodd
Chairman
Formula 1000 Rally Club Committee

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Tarmac Championship Driver 2007

Peter Jones

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