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.....with the co-driver. He simply becomes office manager for the duration, masterminding - in Bulgin's case that's a contradiction in terms - all the reading, writing and 'rithmetic, so that the driver can prop up the bar and talk tyres and camshafts with other interested parties. But as John Milton so nicely put it: "They also serve who only stand and waif - just don't ask if Milton was the fella who used to navigate for Roger Clark, that's all....
Rallying etiquette says that the navigator generally pays the entry fee and his own expenses; which is fair enough. Those costs might include such items as maps, Romers, stopwatches, perhaps even a seat specifically suited to the navvy's warped frame should he decide to take up this mental anguish seriously.
Most serious navigators use an RAC rally driver's licence, because while you can co-drive on a driver's ticket, the opposite doesn't apply; CCC's man used the same dog-eared yellow £8 Restricted Rally Driver's document that he purchased in order to fill the pilot's seat on the Eagle road rally.
Signing on was in a tent at the centre of the service area on Epynt at some unearthly hour like 7:45 on a Sunday morning; as a way to escape Tony Blackburn's Junior Choice, rallying has its merits. So where - and what - is Epynt?
The Epynt ranges straddle the hills between Llandovery and Builth Wells in Mid-Wales. To a rally driver, the place offers a host of fast, closed private roads for a set number of weekends a year. During the week, the Ministry of Defence use the area on which to hide cardboard tanks and allow Her Majesty's Forces to practise advance sheep evasion tactics, or similar. Because it's private land, with only a minimum of public road linking sections, three factors combine to make rallying on Epynt a little different from the mainstream.
Firstly, crews can generally use pacenotes without fear of being lynched, disqualified or otherwise humiliated, and several switched-on entrepreneurs can readily supply such documents. With such short distances on public roads, racing slicks - made street legal with the addition of a series of hand-cut grooves - are mandatory for the quick boys, and events tend to take the format of consisting of a number of laps around a central service point, with stages being run in both directions.
To actually get an entry on an Epynt event, the co-driver must be pretty smart. Offering 90 hard-hitting stage miles for £38, and easy servicing to boot, such rallies are as popular with the Welsh rallying mafia as CB radios and kidding about engine outputs. So you must ensure that your cheque reaches the organisers faster than a TR7V8 accelerates away from a stage start.
Sometime before the event, you will receive a bunch of final instructions through the post, GPO-willing. It will tell you your number - Atkinson/Bulgin were poorly seeded, for reasons obscure, at 38 - the number of starters - an unbelievable 135 - signing on and scrutineering details, start time and location and other useful information. Such as:
'En route from this garage to the start area caution at a narrow bridge 147/956494. This bridge has a five ton weight limit (so if your rally car weighs more than five tons please use alternative route!I'
Similar delights are soon discovered; five awards are generously presented by the Mother's Pride bakery at Taff's Well: should you win one, is that tantamount to having your cake and eating it?
After signing on, you receive a clutch of time cards and a road book and multifarious paper items.
This is where Bulgin panics. Listen to some of the explanations on the flysheet of the route manual. 'Stage and time control times are the theoretical arrival of a notional car 0.... Passage and time controls will close when the last vehicle not OTL has passed through.... However the service out time for Car O is flexible....' You get the picture?
Everyone thinks that rallying consists of simply getting-very-sideways-in-forests; no, the reality is tied up with theoretical arrivals and notional Car O's. And OTL can only mean Out To Lunch, right?
Which is where Bulgin was mentally, just prior to the start. Atkinson helped out wonderfully. Firstly he said that we could dispense with a map. The road book contained lots of tulip diagrams- little boy scout-style ball and arrow pictograms - for getting from stage to stage. And, well, Chris had done some rallies on Epynt before and so was more than somewhat familiar with the area; and if car 38 got totally lost, it could always tail another competitor to the next stage.
The next troublespot concerned timing. Stages are timed, to the second. Road sections are timed to the minute. A Target Timing system is used. That's got nothing to do with the Ministry of Defence's shooting range on Epynt, merely that you are given a set time in which to get to the next stage.
Say you start Stage One at 09:58.00 - a decent time to wake upon Sunday morning, never mind go rallying - and complete the stage at 10:03.56; then you have completed the stage in 5m56s. Easy. Now, if the road book says you've got 20 minutes to get to the next stage, then your due arrival time is the previous stage finish time plus 20 minutes, or, as Mr. Atkinson says, 10:23. You've got an additional 15 minutes lateness on the total road mileage to allow for a tyre change, call of nature, traffic, autograph hunters, breakfast and so on... Meaning, in theory at least, that you could arrive as late as 10:38 without going Out To Lunch.
Sorry. OTL actually means Over Time Limit but the effect is the same. Your rally has ended prematurely.
Also on the time card are various target and bogey times for the stages which nobody seemed to understand and/or care about too much.
Belt yourself in and wait for Chris to finish a deep conversation with Norm and John. You discover your all-singing Japanese state-of-the-art microchip chronograph is running four minutes fast and is thus as useful as a cracked egg timer.
Or could it be that the organisers are four minutes adrift?
It's surprising to see how many rally people wear fireproof overalls nowadays; some are even wearing svelte CCC-copy Hawk zoot suits. Chris has carefully wired an intercom mouth piece and earphones into the trusty Simpson helmet. Great, except that the vital black box in the cockpit has ceased to be. Throat lozenge time.
At the start you collect a time and trundle through a forest to Stage One. In the road book there is a speed limit through the forestry roads of 25mph. It's enforced by special agent marshals disguised as trees or the occupants of a Marina hidden up a firebreak. Besides, the view is stunning. We've got 20 minutes to complete 5.2 miles and Chris is enjoying the scenery.
In the door pocket of the Fiesta is a chubby paperback entitled "The Amazing Results Of Positive Thinking". Atkinson's read it. "It's quite an interesting book."
Hmmmm...
At Stage One, you get out of the car and ask the marshal for an arrival time. We arrive at 9:04 and want 9:09 plonked on the card; he does it. If he had scribed 9:04 on the ticket, then we would have been so far down the field on road penalties as to make continuing fruitless, and Mr. Atkinson would have instantly ensured that the murder rate in Wales would have increased by one for 1981.
The white Fiesta creeps forward to the stage start, and Chris smiles. "I won't go too wild straight away." Thoughtful fellow. The maroon Chevette ahead takes off and we are next.
The time goes on the card, you count down with the marshal and as you both get to one-and-GO! so Atkinson drops the clutch.
The Fiesta rockets forward. It's obvious that it will pull a lot of revs - Atkinson uses up to 8300rpm - and that your driver is extremely determined. You sit lower and behind him; he sits up and high at the controls, Russell Brookes-style, like a pianist attacking an upright piano.
It's difficult to watch him drive. Your allotted task is to stare as far ahead as possible to shout out when you see any of the fluorescent orange marker arrows. Ignore the ones pointing straight ahead, and forget the severity of the turns. They are just Left and Right. Yell once and firmly. Without the intercom, Atkinson admits later that he couldn't distinguish which way you shouted; but the ape-like grunt was enough to focus his attention fully on the road ahead.
This Fiesta is quick. It loses out uphill on torque and on top speed on the flat - with the current differential it will only hit 93mph, which is way off the Epynt pace, but changing the crownwheel and pinion would destroy its slow corner urge.
Through the screen you can see a glorious summer day on a wide, open moor, a clot of spectators at a hairpin - and a smokey Chevette. We're catching the guy in front!
Going into the 180 - a left - the Chevette feints left up a blocked path (he hasn't checked the roadbook!) and then swings right into the hairpin proper, as if to let Chris through.
Like Hell. As Chris dives for the inside with race-driver bravery, so the Chevette driver crudely hauls on the handbrake to pull him around. Chris does likewise - and the cars touch. There's a bang, the Fiesta shudders and then ... it's drag racing time! The two cars run side-by-side out of the hairpin and the Chevette loses out. End of problem.
Exciting? Absolutely. But Atkinson never said a word or lost his cool. It was just another minor irritation, like the fact that the navigator had forgotten to click on his stopwatch at stage start to crosscheck that the marshals.....
Captions -
Top-Middle - Everyone thinks that rallying consists of simply getting-very-sideways-in-forests; no, the reality is tied up with theoretical arrivals and notional Car O's. And OTL can only mean Out To Lunch, right?
Middle - The white Fiesta creeps forward to the stage start, and Chris smiles. "I won't go too wild straight away." Thoughtful fellow.
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