Copy of Article Text Below
.....story. Mr. Atkinson's new navigator gets rattled enough by six-figure map references, but pacenotes? Chris continues unabashed. "... You want to have all the relevant notes in the right order and check that the intercom works. Have various routes sorted out if we do get a problem between stages and there's a possibility of nipping back to service when.we shouldn't really do so. But you've got to have it all worked out. And keep an eye on the organisers and make sure they know what they are doing and there aren't any loopholes in their timing.
"And that's about all I look for. And don't panic. It's all straightforward, really."
The way Chris Atkinson explains it, all a co-driver needs is the brain power of a microcomputer, the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, the patience of Job, and the obedience of Lassie. It all sounds suspiciously like parole for closet intellectuals.
So who is this Atkinson guy?
He is a qualified motor engineer running a small garage deep in the Herefordshire countryside, a few miles from Cider City itself. In 1979, he won the cut-and-thrust Ford Escort 1300 Rally Championship and thus marked himself as a man to watch. Since then he's fostered some strong connections with Ford's Boreham competitions headquarters with the result that - in exchange for some folding green - he now runs a works built Group Two Fiesta.
Built by the factory as a possible works rally car for the eighties in the run-up to the decision to go with the aggressive-looking Escort RS1700T, the Fiesta features a radical front-biased weight distribution, a funny fluid Ferguson differential, a Hewland box with ultra-close ratios, and 155bhp. That's the magic figure, because Ford discovered that at around 160bhp, front-wheel-drive automatically ceased to become an attractive competition configuration.
Chris actually helped out at the now-legendary Welsh test where Stig Blomqvist proved to Ford that fwd was a motorsport blind alley; Atkinson learnt a lot by sitting with the Swede. On the loose he uses left-foot-braking - will he be doing so over Epynt?
"Only if it's persistently raining" comes the downbeat reply. Atkinson is articulate, intelligent and sports a bandit moustache. You get the impression that his piercing blue eyes don't miss much where rallying is concerned.
Like most young rallying hotshoes, Atkinson is strapped for cash. This weekend, Epynt's reputation for notoriously unpredictable weather prompted him to buy five Michelin TB15 wet racing tyres. A cheque for £299 was duly written and Epynt was bathed in sunshine throughout the event. For the Epynt thrash, Atkinson's hustled a modicum of cash from City Speed of Gloucester, performance car and parts vendors to all of a motorsporting persuasion.
The team assemble on Epynt early on Sunday morning, bleary-eyed from a night in Llandovery punctuated by the Massed Kawasaki And Yamaha Steel Band playing their latest hit entitled 'Rev-Up' under bedroom windows at two in the morning. Atkinson's gang consist of Big John (six foot three inches of broad Hereford accent packed into an unflappable frame) as number one spannerman and barge driver; Jonathan - always known as Norm - for some unfathomable reason - as his sidekick and confidante, and Chris' girlfriend, Katy, as general foreperson and picnic controller.
Scrutineering happened on Saturday night and was much as described in Being There-3 (CCC September 81) save that the car passed, no problem.
Not that anything car-wise has much to do.....
Captions -
Top-Middle - The way Atkinson explains it, all a co-driver needs is the brain power of a microcomputer, the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, the patience of Job, and the obedience of Lassie. It all sounds suspiciously like parole for closet intellectuals.
|
