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.

Tristan Dodd
Chairman
Formula 1000 Rally Club Committee