Crail Summer Stage Rally

25th June 2013

The 5th round of the Scottish Tarmac Championship was held on the 15th June at the old wartime airfield of Crail in Fife. This was a single stage venue rally consisting of 6 stages of 8.5 miles long on mainly tarmac perimeter roads. Buoyed by their recent success at Ingilston Rally the father and daughter pairing of Bill & Sara Hamilton had once again entered their Hamilton Optimum Training 1978 Opel Kadett Coupe in class 3, with Euan MacKay / Micheile Falconer, Gordon Mackay / Ross Maclean both in Peugeot 106’s 1600cc in class 2.

Bill nearly never made it, being delayed offshore due to fog and arriving home late on the Thursday with a gearbox and suspension to fit before they left on the Friday. A fair bit of midnight oil was burnt before the crew headed off slightly later on the Friday.

The weather forecast was reporting for rain for the Saturday, but the 75 main competitors and 18 juniors were met with glorious sunshine which lasted for most of the day with only a spot of rain around midday. The stages were quite “green” for the first stages and Crail, notorious for rolling cars, proved that yet again as by midway 3 cars had rolled, and numerous cars were showing battle scars or had retired. The most spectacular being a Ford Kia driven by Ian Forgan that went end over end, on stage 2, which fortunately both driver and navigator walked away from, shaken but unharmed. Gordon MacKay’s 106 succumbed to a broken engine mounting on stage 4, forcing him into retirement.

Bill and Sara in the Kadett were setting top 10 times right from the start with their only problem being that they had listened to the weather forecast that had predicted rain and had only taken super soft tyres with them, this was hampering them slightly as the tyres were going “off” by the end of a stage and were totally wrecked by the end of the rally. The only other real scare they had was when they caught a slower car that had not seen then and the car turned in whilst Bill was overtaking it causing a few stressful filled moments for the pair, fortunately they managed to survive to record a finish of 9th overall and 2nd in class just being beaten by 13seconds by a Edward Todd in a GTM coupe.

Euan MacKay in the Highland Waste Peugeot 106 had a terrific win in Class 2 and was 11th overall. He had a great battle all day with the Escort of Guy Halley and the Corsa of Scott Russell and only 15 separating them at the finish. The event was won by Bruce Edwards/Jim Smith in a Darrian T9 2200cc from Stuart Baile/Lachian Cowan in a Subaru Impreza and Alan Gardiner /Robin Nicholsonin a Ford Escort 2400cc.

Full results can be found at http://www.gmsc.org.uk/results.cfm?ID=99

PHOTO by David Hatrick