The William Paterson Memorial Targa Rally report from winning navigator Sasha Heriot

June 2nd, 2017

The William Paterson Memorial Targa Rally report from winning navigator Sasha Heriot

The William Paterson Memorial Targa Rally report from winning navigator Sasha Heriot

Targa rallies, for those who are unfamiliar or unsure, are events run in sociable hours, usually on a Sunday. The entry fee is around £80-£100, usually closed to club. They start at around 10am after a bacon butty breakfast, consist of a number of tests on private land, which can be on just about any surface and any length. At lunch time there is a break for food, followed by a few more tests in the afternoon. Finish by 3pm and home for tea! Any standard car can be used, and a road rally car is perfect. Tyre restrictions are currently determined by the event organisers (although this may change next year – so please read and respond to the MSA consul- tation ASAP), and there is no timing to worry about. So a fun day out to be had by all!
The William Paterson Memorial Targa Rally was our second attempt at a Targa. We enjoyed the Stocktoni- an Rally in October last year because of the style of the tests – on tracks with not too many cones to negotiate! After Steve contacted the organisers of South Of Scot- land Car Club Ltd, we were assured that the format of this event would be mostly similar. We arrived at the start venue at 7:45am and had the car scrutineered. At signing on I received the road book – a tulip book to get from test to test, and the test diagrams which I reviewed with Steve whilst enjoying a bacon butty and a cup of tea. We left the start venue at just after 10am to the first test just half a mile down the road.
The first test, Oakbank 1, was 2 laps on tarmac around the yard of a waste recycling plant owned by John Bogie-David Bogie’s dad. At the start we tried to have a look at the venue, but you could only really see the first corner, so no advantage was to be gained by watching the other cars! We were set off by the start marshal who was in radio contact with the marshal at the finish, so we did not have to start on a specific mi- nute, but set off according to the finish marshals stop watch. I also used my stop watch to keep time. The first test included 2 laps and a couple of donuts around a cone, and took just over 2 minutes to complete, just 1 second slower than the fastest and local crew of Crosbie/McKnight.
The next test, was a short drive away called Collin 1 and is David Bogie’s test track. This time on gravel, which included a 10 second stop astride, and some concrete chicanes, that you really did not want to con- tact! We were the quickest by 1 second this time and completed it in just over 1.5 minutes.
Test three was Joneses Yard 1, a broken/gravel sur-?face. This is a venue that is used by the club as an?auto test venue, and all we could really see on the start?line were the start and finish cones, the rest obscured?with bushes. This was the test that we had not been?looking forward too, and, as expected there seemed to?be cones everywhere! We probably set off too fast and?misjudged the scale of the venue which was much?smaller than we anticipated! This meant that we had to?come to a full stop midway through the test to really?make sure that we went the right way around the?cones. The last Chicane was extremely tight, and hav-?ing approached from a sub-optimum angle, we had to?reverse, and in the process hit a cone – senior moment?number one of the day! A very slow time of just over?1.5 minutes and a 10 second penalty, but we managed to negotiate it correctly in the end. The local crews did their “sighting” lap in just over a minute!
It was then back to the first test of the day where we repeated the tests. Faster times on the second loop with a joint fastest on Oak- bank 2 with Paterson/Paterson, and 5 seconds quicker than previ- ous. On Collin 2, we were joint fastest again with Paterson/Paterson shaving 3 seconds off our earlier time and then it was to Joneses 2, our nemesis test, where a slower approach resulted in a time 22 seconds faster than our previous run, but nowhere near close to the local crews! At lunch halt (scotch pie and chips) we were 6th overall, although we did not know this at the time, as some of our times were incorrect in the results!
After lunch we drove a few miles to the start of the next loop of four back-to-back gravel tests, all fast and flowing with a few code boards and chicanes to slow us down. These were the type of tests that we had really come for and suited both us and the car very nice- ly! Dalswinton 1 went through a farm and we were joint fastest at 72 seconds with Paterson/Paterson. Sandbed 1 was another similar fast test and joint fastest with 3 other crews at 127 seconds. Windy Hill 1 started over a bridge, then round a tight right hand bed over a series of cattle grids and through some tight chicanes. We were 1 second faster than Crosbie/McKnight on this test at 81 seconds.?The final test in the loop was Windmills 1. This test had some very tight chicanes and took us up the hill, round a small crop of trees and then back down through the same chicanes to the finish where we stared the test. We used the same start and finish line. Alt- hough we were not the quickest by a few seconds, we did not take any cone penalties like many of the other crews suffered and ended up with one of the best times!
It was a short drive then to the start of the second afternoon loop?and we repeated the 4 tests. Dalswinton 2 we were joint quickest?with Mclean/Mclean and 1 second faster than our first run. On?Sandbed 2, Steve had his second senior moment of the day…..5, 4, 3, 2 ,1 go…..Well we would have gone, if he hadn’t have stalled the car because he left the handbrake on! Despite this, we were fastest, 9 seconds quicker than earlier and 4 seconds faster than Paterson/Paterson. Windy Hill 2, again, we set the fastest time, 1 second faster than Crosbie/McKnight and 8 seconds quicker than on the first loop. We completed the final test, Windmills 2, 9 sec- onds faster than our first run and in the same time as Mclean/Mclean, however, they, like many of the crews suf- fered the tight chicanes and accumulated cone penalties for the final test.
Our clean runs on Windmills, with no cone penalties meant that we ended up first overall by just 11 seconds. Pat- erson/Paterson came second and third overall was Crosbie/McKnight. We were extremely pleased to have done so well especially as it was our first visit to the area, and after our very slow times on the third (auto) test! Thanks to Ian Crosbie and the team who made us feel very welcome, and his army of marshals who enjoyed the sunshine all the day. Well worth the trip across the border.