Not The Boxing Day Rally 2009

At last, Here are the results from 'Not The Boxing Day Rally'.. Many Thanks Roger... From what I've heard it was a great event... I'm definitely going next year...

NTBDR 2009 Results

Kindly provided by Andrew O'Donohoe...

Thanks to Trish Denning’s posting on the TDC website, a plan was hatched to head North on December 28 to compete in the UAC’s appropriately named event “It’s Not the Boxing Day Rally”. This event takes the form of a multivenue autotest. What persuaded me to enter this event was Trish’s description of the event which said “surfaces range from tarmac, concrete, loose, grass, to a range of other deposits found in farms which could prove to be slippy in places”. Trish was wrong. Surfaces ranged from snow to ice and very little else.

The night before the event Ronnie Griffin called me. Through his customary shouting down the phone, I was just about able to make out something about entering a team, to comprise of Frank Lenehan, Ronnie and myself. The attraction it seemed was that our entry fee would be reimbursed if we won. Needless to say that sounded appealing to me!

Always being short of a navigator, I drafted in the “skills” of a work colleague, Ronan White. Ronan had in the past proven his ability to read maps, but notwithstanding his lack of experience in the navigator’s seat, he was willing to “give it a go”. We decided to enter into the spirit of the event and take the Midget. Frank was “out to win” and didn’t enter into the spirit of the event. He used his Starlet and co-opted the services of the vastly experienced and similarly aged Beatty Crawford. Ronnie elected for “reliability” and had Joe Reynold’s MGB GT with Alan Dorman in the hot seat.

Ronan and I left Dublin on December 28 at 06:00am (Frank and Ronnie had taken the easier option and gone up the night before). As we approached Hillsborough just after 08:00am we knew that Ronnie had arrived before us – we could hear him! Before I had signed on Ronnie was giving me team orders for the day. “It’s very simple” he said. “Maximum attack from the start”. Given that I slipped twice on the way to sign on, this made me nervous.

We were extended a warm welcome by all at the UAC. Many of the usual faces were there to greet us. It was great to see Trevor Faulkner out and even greater that he was navigating…one less quick Midget driver to contend with.

The start was delayed for an hour while the test sites were salted. This gave Ronan and me a chance to go through the road book and particularly the test diagrams as you were not allowed to walk the tests before driving them.

Test one proved to be a disaster. You were not allowed to walk the test and you couldn’t see the test site from the start line. Frank went first….and got lost. We were next up….and got lost. We ended up following a Triumph Hearald (which had started the test after us) to the finish. We were given a max time. Then it was Ronnie’s turn. Above the engine noise and tyre screeching and Ronnie’s shouting, the ever patient Alan got Ronnie to the finish, with a third fastest time of the day.

It was around this time that it became clear to Ronnie and me that Frank didn’t want to talk to us, he was there to do a job and that was to win. Ronnie christened him Frank “I’m only here to win” Lenehan.

From then on, the tests were more like the selectives of old, all forward motion and arrowed. All three of us adopted Ronnie’s “maximum attack” team order and we put in some quick times. Beatty Crawford has sat with some of Ireland’s best drivers. This hadn’t prepared him for sitting with Frank.

Early afternoon saw us arriving at a test on a jaunting track. Mid way through the first turn, we hit ice. We drifted wide and lightly “brushed” a wooden fence and some shrubbery – putting the first mark on the Midget since its two year rebuild. Unfortunately Ronnie was watching and was greatly amused by this. Of course he knew better than I how to get around a corner on ice. He performed exactly the same manoeuvre on the same bend and….got away with it, setting fastest time on that test by almost 3 seconds. I relayed this story to Frank later, who confessed to having taking a very close look at the same wooden fence. Later, a MkII Escort went through the fence and had a less fortunate outcome that Team TDC.

At the end of the day, James Wilson and Arthur McMullan won the event in their Mini. Ronnie and Alan were just marginally behind, finishing second overall and Frank and Beatty finished third. Ronan and I finished eighth. Team TDC won the team award. Interestingly, Ronnie had 6 FTDs, two more than winners James and Arthur. I managed one FTD and Frank had none!

It was a great event, a credit to the UAC and to the marshals that stood out in Arctic conditions all day. We look forward to defending our title next year.

It might be worth mentioning that the MG Car Club is running the Derek Walker Trial on 6 February, 2010. A few of us have done this event and it always proves to be a good one.

Andrew O'Donohoe

Great write-up Andrew... Sounds like it was very tricky...