Rally Car Magazine

In Deepest Wales.

To find out how healthy club rallying is, David Campbell tackled the Minafon Ranges Stages in Mid Wales, co-driving for Iwan Roberts in his Group N Peugeot 309 Gti. It was quite an experience!!.

What is it that makes the Welsh so fast in Rally Cars? And why is it that apart from David Llewellin and Gwyndaf Evans, that there are no other Welsh drivers at the top of British Rallying, when there are proportionately more of them, and they all seem very quick?

These are all questions that are hard to answer, and for people like Iwan Roberts, the second one grates.

The list of people that Roberts has proved time and time that he can beat is endless. While driving the Opel Manta 400, he was blisteringly quick, and was holding his own in 3rd overall on the 1987 Welsh International Rally, ahead of Russell Brookes amongst others. His performances in the BTRDA and National Championships were stunning, and yet he finds himself back at the bottom of the pile. But he is still a legend in Wales! In fact, the whole Roberts family is well known throughout the country, and John Roberts, Iwan's older brother is widely respected as a very quick driver. Yet he too has failed to gain any meaningful recognition that could have put him further up the ladder.

For Iwan's part, rallying is now an expensive hobby, which he indulges in occasionally, and John even less so. Iwan's career ended with an unsuccessful season with Peugeot driving one of their Gp N Peugeot 309 Gti's in the National Championship. Whilst his team mates Warren Hunt and Colin McRae, have both gone onto greater things, while Iwan was left with an offer to buy the car ar a reasonable rate.

With family commitments (Iwan is building his own house and shortly plans to get married) and a job which hardly brings in enough money to pay the mortgage, Roberts is not inclined to think about rallying all that much. To him, it is a dream which finally escaped him last year, and was replaced by disillusionment.

"What do I have to do?" he asks. "No-one was quicker than me. I was prepared to put myself out. But no-one took any notice. The only one was Russell Brookes, who was always encouraging me."

"Unless someone is willing to sponsor me, I have to forget about rallying now. I miss it, yes, but I don't think that it'll break my heart. I did everything I could, but it's over now"

It's a sad indictment of our sport, and the people who back it, that talent such as Iwan Roberts is allowed to slip through.

But why should it happen? Why should people with less talent find themselves in supported drives, or even in works cars? Mrs Roberts probably put her finger on it when she said "Well, both of my boys have mouths."

That maybe so, Iwan is very aware that if your face doesn't fit, or more to the point, if you don't say the right things at the right times, then no-one will touch you as far as support goes. You can see the logic, after all, there is a lot of money involved and a manufacturers reputation; but what is the point in sponsoring some colourless, adequate driver who trips out with the company line every time he is spoken to? A common cry amongst today's journalists is that there are no drivers with character anymore. There are exceptions, but these are very few. Both Roberts brothers have plenty of character. They may speak their minds, but that's refreshing; it is the PR mans job to get the selling message across and the driver's job to drive and generally be the star. And what's wrong with honesty anyway, unless people have something to hide?

Iwan Roberts is no smooth talker, but he's got character and drives incredibly quickly!

It seems that with present team policy, Britain is destined for a breed of mediocre rally drivers with a smooth line in sales talk and well rounded vowels.

I have known Iwan for a long time, and he has often threatened to take me out and frighten me in a rally car. Often, while spectating on BTRDA and National rallies, people have stood in awe of the Welshman as he flicked his Manta through bends at impossible speeds. So when he suggested that we compete on the Minafon Stages Rally together, I couldn't resist.

Apart from finding out just how he managed such a turn of speed, it provided an ideal opportunity to find out what is happening at the grass roots level of the sport.

The rally was a single venue event, run by Bala and District Motor Club over the Trawsfynydd Ranges, just down the road from the Roberts family home in Ffestiniog. It was the first round of the Peter Jones Rallying Clubmans Championship. The entry was rich for a closed to club rally, with a wealth of top clubman names such as Wil Morris, Geoff Jones and Ceiriog Hughes. It was going to be a tough battle!

Iwan didn't hold up much hope in our 120bhp Peugeot carrying twice the weight of the 200bhp Escorts gracing the field. The road ran steeply uphill in places; it didn't look good!

The car, a Group N 309, was so standard that it took Iwan over an hour to adjust the handbrake the night before the rally (the only task that he had to do to prepare it!) "There are so many wires and things under there" he explained, "for the boot release catch……….and so on"

Iwan told me before the start that he led the event last year for six stages in his old Sunbeam………….then he rolled! Anyway we were intent on "having a go"

The rally started in the car park of the ranges, with the course being marked out with tyres for about a quarter of a mile around the perimeter, before heading out through the gate and onto a section of main road through the ranges which can be closed off for rallying. Although this is the only road that is usable at the moment, Clerk of the Course, Edwyn Evans and his crew had used their collective imagination to create three completely different stages, which would each run four times. This was helped by using a tricky triangle junction, which provided for some spectacular action each time we negotiated it!

Now there's something that I didn't know about Iwan which provided a bit of a shock at the start; he has an unusual method of psyching himself up. We started at car 3, behind Hughes at 0, and Morris and Jones at 1 and 2. As Geoff pulled off from the stage start, we moved up to the line. I checked the timing and the stage diagram, and then it happened; "whaa! Bang, bang, crash……."

"What the…." I looked up to find Iwan thumping his hands against the steering wheel and screaming at himself! It was most disconcerting!

Anyway we shot off at a tremendous rate of knots. I was surprised by the power of the Peugeot off the line, but then it was slightly downhill. Despite Roberts Wildman antics, he was obviously in full control of the car, and hadn't taken leave of his senses as I had thought!

The lack of an LSD through the tight, twisty bends in the car park was a big disadvantage. The inside wheel was spinning wildly on every turn, and what little power there was not being put down on the road. I cringed at the thought of what our stage time would be, fearing that the Escorts were pulling loads of time out of us. But to my surprise we were fourth fastest.

The second stage was depressing. It started with a long uphill section, and the Peugeot struggled to get any speed at all. The Escorts were leaving big black tyre marks for hundreds of yards up the hill from the start, while Iwan had to dip the clutch to stop the engine dying………….."You need a calendar you pair" said the timekeeper at the end of the stage. Oh dear……..

Our time according to him was 2m 11s, while Morris and co were clocking 1m 42s. "There's no way" cried Iwan. "It's a mistake" I felt that he was right, but we were slow. After some discussion with Edwyn Evans, we discovered a 20s discrepancy, and it was settled that we'd actually scored 1m 51s. Much better!

I could still hardly believe how we managed third fastest after that hill, however, but I suppose we were quickest around the triangle! It was there I discovered the secret of Iwan's speed………….

There was a fast left approach to this tricky section, then it was hard right, hairpin left and hard right. The Peugeot slewed wildly sideways under braking on the approach. The crowd scattered, and I prepared myself for a big big accident. Somehow, Iwan grappled with the steering; I kept my eyes shut! When I opened them again, we were facing the right way on the exit. No spin, no off! How he ever managed it I will never know! So I suppose our time was no fluke. Just to prove it, the three times that we did the stage again, Iwan scored even faster times.

Roberts car control was just amazing. Even though, at times, I thought that he had lost it, he always got it around – at speeds you would not believe. We used the triangle 12 times, and I am sure that we hit every part of it! Despite the opposition we managed an incredible third place and first in the two litre class. Not bad for a bog standard 309! But we had quite a battle to the end.

Rob Morse and Tony Stephens in their Brynawelon Hotel, Mass powered Escort were our class rivals. And Morse was no slouch over the first few stages. They grabbed the lead on the opening stage, and as we stood waiting at the start of the second stage, they had us all scratching our heads. No-one actually knew who they were, but we soon found out. Car 11, as we referred to them, was obviously one to watch.

Morse lost some time on the third stage with a spin, which dropped them from the class lead. We managed to overhaul them, but did not think that we could stay ahead. By the halfway mark, we were only one second ahead, and I was sure that they would take us over the next six stages. These were run in the reverse direction, and two of the stages had long downhill sections. "Don't worry" said Iwan "we'll get them downhill." Gulp. I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy this!

Iwan was right. We managed to take a couple of seconds out of them on every stage after that, and managed to win the class by 18 seconds. Iwan worked hard for it, but it was an enthralling battle, and Rob and Tony were great sports. It just goes to prove that a good class fight on a club event can be just as thrilling as any top international rally. I think that if there was some way of informing the large crowd of spectators of what was happening, it would have made for a great day for them, as they watched Iwan on the edge trying to beat the obviously quicker Escort.

Wil Morris, co-driven by Andy Marchbank (he of the entertaining Scouse humour!) won through at the end of the day, with Geoff and Clive Jones having to settle for second after a puncture picked up when they went off briefly at the triangle on stage seven, dropped them behind Morris. This was another fine battle, Jones and Morris equalled each others times on no less than six of the twelve stages. Apart from Stage seven, they were seldom more than a second apart. Jones tried hard to catch up after his time loss, and might have done it if he had not lost third gear.

A group A Nova is a fast car, but few people can pedal one as quickly as Ceiriog Hughes. The Garage owner set some remarkable times in the Minafon Quality Cars Nova, only for his engine to blow after the second stage.

Another fast driver to come to light was John Jones in his 1300cc Escort. You may remember from our feature on Welsh Championship driver Mike Jones in his regular TNT Vauxhall Nova, that John is Mike's regular co-driver. John bought the car off Mike to help him fund the Nova, and has been making a name for himself in local Welsh rallies ever since. We had to keep a close eye on his times! He scored a nice class win on the event.

Another real character from the Club scene in North Wales is Dave Baines, who is also a very quick driver. Unfortunately, Baines rolled his Escort after hitting tyres in the car park section, and then sent his co-driver out onto the bonnet to work the throttle after the cable snapped!

But the one chap who epitomized the best in scouse humour on the event was Ian Malam aka Bubbles. This guy was incredible. His gearbox broke just before the start, but as his start time came up, he crawled from under the car, covered in oil, smiling; he'd fixed it. He then proceeded to blow the whole unit apart on the stage. "Never mind" he grinned at the finish "you either laugh or cry; me I'm laughing"

Bala Praise

The Minafon Stages were a great success. The concept of single venue rallying hardly appeals to most rally crews, except those who cannot afford to do anything else, but the Bala MC organised event had the true flavour of a stage rally.

The timing was simple; you turned up at the stage start behind the car in front of you! You were given your start time just before you left the start line. It was uncomplicated, but it left the co-driver with little to do except keep an eye on the timing marshalls, and lend moral support to the driver.

However, the stages made up for it. It was used in two directions, and modified in such a way as to have three different stages with shared sections. It meant that there was a fair bit of waiting around between stages, and starts were completed at 30 second intervals. However with the likes of Roberts and Marchbank around, there was no shortage of entertainment and banter to be had during the slack periods. The intense competition on the stages made for lively discussion between stages, and there was much philosophising about the current state of British rallying.

"This is grassroots rallying" said Dylan Evans of Bala Mc. "We've got to keep things like this for the youngsters"

"It's primarily a place for the clubman" said Clerk of the Course Edwyn Evans. "The local Authorities such as the Sports Council for Wales, The Welsh Development Agency and the Meirionnydd District Council put up 75% of the money to lease the venue. It was £12,000. We had a trial and error event, called Panic Stages, two years ago, and there was such a good response that we had to try and find a way of carrying on"

The club hopes to run another rally over the Trawsfynydd Ranges this year, and rumour has it that bigger stage rallies such as The Cambrian and Skip Brown events might use it as a stage this year and next year.

But as the Minafon Stages drew to a close, and the inevitable ribbing began, we could reflect on a very inexpensive day's sport, which provided more entertainment per pound sterling than you could find on any international rally.

It is a cliche which makes you want to cringe when you read the weeklies, but a great day's sport was had by all.

David Campbell Rally Car Magazine September 1989

22 July - Minafon Garage Ranges Stages
1, Wil Morris/Andy Marchbank (Escort) 22m 39s
2, Geoff Jones/Carl Jones (Escort) 23m 09s
3, Iwan Roberts/Dave Campbell (309 GTI) 24m 06s
4, Des Wynne/Lawrence Kinnair (Escort) 24m 13s
5, Gareth Davies/Gwyndaf Roberts (Chevette) 24, 17s
6, Robert Morse/Tony Stevens (Escort) 24m 21s
7, John Jones/Neil Jones (Escort) 24m 22s
8, Ray O'Neill/Andy Davies (Corolla) 24m 25s
9, Pat Jeffs/Carol Winstanley (Escort) 24m 38s
10, John Jones/Ian Rogers (Escort) 24m 40s
Ceiriog Hughes ran at 0 in a Nova but retired after 2 stages
48 starters - 33 finishers