Seb Perez celebrated his British Historic Rally Championship crown in style; braving storm Bert, with Dale Bowen alongside on this occasion, to claim historic category victory on the new for 2024 Rally Anglo Caledonian.
The brain child of Colin Heppenstall, Rally Anglo Caledonian was a new event for 2024, effectively replacing the Carlisle Stages with a 140 mile 2 day blast through the English / Scottish border forests. A mouth watering prospect and what better way to round out the British Historic Rally Championship season! However things started to unravel on the run up to the event as first the rally was robbed of an epic title showdown following the forced withdrawal of title hopeful Mark Higgins (injured) and then the onset of Storm Bert!
Heavy Snow, rain and high winds were forecast putting the rally in doubt but somehow, through quick thinking and a flexible approach the team behind the award winning Roger Albert Clark Rally managed to pull off a minor miracle in what were, at times, horrific conditions. The fact that only 2 stages and part of Buck Fell were lost is quite frankly an incredible achievement!
Day 1 saw the worst of the conditions as Kielder was hit with a couple of hours of heavy snow before rain set in. And despite the organisers decision to delay the event by a few hours and re-work the running order the stages were still treacherous by the time the historic crews came through the first loop of stages in the Kershope forest complex.
The result was a completely mixed up leaderboard with cars separated by minutes rather than the usual seconds with Matthew Stroud leading the historic runners from David Henderson, Paul Thompson and Matthew Robinson. Meanwhile Perez and Bowen had opted for a steady start, lying 11th of the historic runners and sitting over a minute behind after stage 2.
The newly crowned BHRC champ would soon reap the rewards of a cautious start however as top 3 stage times in Ash Park 2 and Kershope 2 saw the Porsche 911 pilot climb to second in the historic category before really showing his class by setting a pair of phenomenal stage times in what turned out to be the final stages of the day. Indeed his time of 17.48 through Gowanburn, a whole 1 minute and 31 seconds quicker than overall event winners Alan Carmichael and Jane Nicol in the Hyundai i20N may well go down in folklore!
Paul Thompson meanwhile had required a hire car for this event following accident damage incurred on the Malton Forest rally and would have been over the moon to sit 2nd in the historic category overnight following a measured drive through the snow, ice, fog and darkness of Killer Kielder; so impressive in-fact that he and Josh Davison had a margin of almost 5 minutes over 3rd placed fellow Yorkshireman David Henderson! But given the conditions just making it to the end of day 1 was a feat in itself as expected front runners Nick Elliott, Ben Friend and Stefaan Stouf found out whilst Adrian Hetherington would also hit trouble but return on Sunday under Super Rally rules.
Sunday would be a different kettle of fish entirely however as rising temperatures and torrential rain had almost cleared the snow entirely from the Southern Scottish stages and the predicted high winds were not quite as bad as expected leaving the event to run like clockwork.
After setting the timing sheets alight on Saturday evening Perez and Bowen picked up where they left off on Sunday morning, reeling off 4 top 5 stage times in a row through the classic stages of Castle O’er, Twiglees, Windyhill and Ae to sit just 18 seconds behind the overall event leaders! Could the 911 crew really take the battle to the modern 4WD Hyundai over the remaining 4 stages?
Unfortunately a gear stick issue in Twiglees 2 would put pay to any overall victory challenge but once resolved the 2024 BHRC champ would still go on to record a dominant historic rally victory with a winning margin of over 7 minutes! Some drive and we can only hope the mighty Porsche makes a return in 2025!
Paul Thompson and Josh Davison meanwhile followed up an excellent day 1 with another solid performance on day 2, consistently setting top 15 stage times in their borrowed Ford Escort MK2 to round out their season in style with the runners up spot on possibly the toughest UK gravel event of the year.
Recent rear wheel drive convert David Henderson, with Will Atkins alongside, was setting a strong pace throughout Sunday and may well have challenged Thompson for second had it not been for losing the clutch in Castle O’er 1 and suffering punctures in both Windyhill 1 and Castle O’er 2. Despite this Henderson still managed to close on Thompson throughout the day and round out the podium positions just over 1 minute in arrears.
Elsewhere in the historic category classes Bryan Jardine and Declan Campbell claimed Safari spec victory in their MK1 Escort with a brilliant 8th overall and 7th in the historics whilst Andy Madge and Matt Cooper claimed an excellent Pre-85 class victory with 18th overall aboard their Toyota Corolla; this after putting in one of the starring performances of Saturday morning to sit well inside the top 10!
Other historic class victories would go the way of Douglas and Graeme Menzies in their Ford Escort MK2 (D3) with 15th overall, Alex Waterman and Chris Davies (C2) aboard their Datsun 1600 SSS with 20th overall, James and Jack Brady (F2) with 24th overall in their Porsche 911, Drexel Gillespie and Gill Cotton (C3) with 26th in their Ford Escort MK1, Ed Abbott and Tom Bishop (D4) in the crowd pleasing Jaguar X-JS V12 with 35th and William Paterson and Tom Hynd (D2) with 40th overall in their Talbot Sunbeam.
In a different approach to the Roger Albert Clark Rally, the organisers allowed 4WD machinery for Rally Anglo Caledonian and despite having the best machinery for the job Alan Carmichael and Jane Nicol put in an excellent drive aboard their Hyundai i20N to claim victory, it can’t be easy having the likes of Seb Perez hunting you down especially as the Derbyshire man could probably drive 911’s in his sleep!
The Sunday stages also formed the final round of the Scottish Rally Championship where the pace at the front was frenetic! 4wd crews featured heavily at the top of the time sheets but it was Mark McCulloch and Michael Hendry who would run out victors in their Proton Satria Evo after a well controlled drive.
Top seeds Josh Wink and Jack Bowen (Hyundai i20 R5) appeared to struggle through the morning stages but were ultra rapid over the final 3 and were an incredible 11 seconds quicker than anyone else in Twiglees 2 to leap from fourth to second on the final stage of the event! Meanwhile Greg McKnight and Harry Marchbank would head the 2 wheel drive crews, coming home an excellent 5th in their Ford Escort MK2 whilst Donald Peacock and Mairi Riddick would be first historic crew home in 13th.
Everyone must have a story to tell regarding the rally and ours was no different having only managed 1 stage on Saturday following a drive to Kielder that took 5 hours longer than usual! The main story of the weekend though has to be how the organisers managed to keep the event running. A quite unbelievable achievement in the circumstances. Let’s hope they are rewarded with a much larger entry in two years time.
GALLERY
Paul Commons Motorsport 