Le jog

[Bob Stubbs]

Just to get some discussion going in this forum..........last night had the privilege of catching the remaining competitors in LE JOG when they reached Aviemore at about 21:00.

 

Had to take my metaphorical hat off to these guys. It was about -2C last night and here a goodly number of them were, top down, about to head off on an all night leg which almost got them to Thurso.......absolutely b....y freezing!  Hadn't realised too that it was such an indirect - off main road route.  They were about to hit some of the classic road rally sections here in the north and it really was reminiscent of my last experience of road rallying........navigators huddled together poring over maps, plotting the route etc.

 

Looking at the results to that point there were some wildly varying penalties in the classes.  By the time they hit South Scotland, the leader of one class had 170 odd penalties whilst bringing up the rear at number 8 was someone with over 26,000 penalties!  Doubtless they both did the same route but I suspect the latter had a cardboard cut out for a navigator and was taking the wrong times on the road.

 

Anyway, there were one or 2 TR's running (3s and 4s) but not a single 6 did I see.  Checking the regs for the event it looks to me that 6 cylinder cars are banned for some reason.  Can anyone throw any light on why that might be cos it seems odd to me if the car is in reasonably original condition?

 

Must admit it took me back to my youth and was great to see.  I guess the survivors will be spending today kipping and tomorrow washing the mud and road salt off their pride and joys.

[Guest mrodbert]

Bob,

 

As one of the mad rallyistes (and yes we must be) to whom you took off your hat, I thank you on behalf of all. I also had to reply, and as you say hopefully get some discussion going.

 

You actually saw us at a good point at Aviemore. We left the Hilton at about midnight, and didnt stop until we finished at John O' Groats at about 11am the following day. There was an hour for (massively overpriced) breakfast at Lymston, but that was really just to give the stragglers an extra hour and get the remaining competitors together so that we could all finish at about the same time at JOG. I have to say that the Hilton people were fantastic. About 100 rally cars descended on them over a 2 hour period messing up their carpark, spilling oil and parts everywhere, camping out in their foyer, and sleeping on their sofas, with not a single room sold all night. Yet they were all helpful and courteous, providing continuous coffee and sandwiches to feed the 10,000, for which I'm sure they didn't collect all the cash they should.

 

After Aviemore we did the "Loch Ness Monster" - 50 miles up hill and down dale on roads ranging from B4digits to unmetaled farm tracks. What fun. We then drove 70 miles up the road and did it all again in a forest. No plot and bash, but some difficult map reading and very, very tight times the whole way. Having said that Scotland was thankfully easier than the previous night in Wales (Epynt et al.) and Yorkshire (Catterick Tank Proving Ground!). In the end we skipped the last regularity as we'd only had 9 hours sleep in the previous 3 nights and didnt want to stuff it in a ditch (and consequently get a DNF) within sight of the finish. Our companion TR4 did the same and we were all saying see you at JOG for a pint and chaser, only to find that their diff gave up the ghost 35 miles from the end. To say they were a bit dissappointed is a bit like saying Fangio knew how to drive.

 

And so to the penalties. I know your comments are broadly supportive, so I wont take it the wrong way, but I urge you not to say anything about cardboard navigators within earshot of anyone with a Le Jog finishers medal. Its a massive endurance event - probably the toughest road rally in Europe - and anyone who got to Avimore probably sweated and bled to make it. I've run the London Marathon and physically, not to mention mentally, Le Jog was tougher. Also, like the marathon, although winning is nice, finishing is also an end in itself. Remember, almost 50% of the field didnt finish this year.

 

There are a couple of vagaries of the rules that might also make a bit more sense of the results. Its all done on handicap within your class and not on absolute times, so if your the best (or near) in your class you will never get any penalties, despite the fact that you may have dropped time everywhere. Conversely, this also means that if you're in a tough class, you can get screwed. In addition, penalties vary, so if you miss a main TC (or cant find the hotel) thats the same as 2/3 regularities worth. Also, a lot of people dropped out when they broke down/ messed up/ got tired and miserable. Consequently if you broke a major item and retired you'd just be DNF; If you took 6 hours to fix it and carried on you might get 10,000 penalties, and on paper that looks worse. I suspect that those that you saw with big penalties did exactly that. Had some big off/ break and spent ages fixing it, but were buggered if they were going to DNF.

 

So how did we do. Well, about 6,000 penalties and 4th (of 8) in class. We also got a red riband for visiting all MCs within time limits. But to do that we didnt make any navigational errors of any consequence - our speciality is missing M-way junctions and screwing up A-road roundabouts, but the difficult stuff we're fine; the car ran faultlessly give or take an LT lead coming loose (15 mins lost) and losing headlights and having to drive on fogs (0 mins lost). So how come we didnt "do better". Well, we were in a class with Robin Eyre-Maunsell (70s Rootes driver) and Willy Cave (60s Triumph et al. navigator), which meant we were rarely in gold position on Tests or Regularities. Also, we need a lot more practise before we can go as fast as some of the others on road and loose. Having said that, we did much better than we planned/ expected and will definitely be back.

 

The six cylinder rule is an MSA one for historic rallying. I'm not sure why, but I think its so that the 911s don't win absolutely everything. As its not a HERO (or CRA) rule you can get special dispensation, although you have to compete as a post-historic. Some organisers (the CRA again, mostly) give preference to older cars (pre 62), so its worth checking. But lots of that generation of cars compete in the HRCR events, so probably ok if you want to have a go.

 

If you've done some of this before, you definitely need to get back in the water. I definitely wished I'd started ages ago.

 

So there you have it. My view for what its worth. Would love to hear some feedback.

 

Mark