PODCAST: THE INSIDE LINE ON HOW RALLYING’S UK RETURN HAPPENED

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Ouninpohja, (oon-in-poi-ya) 20.51 miles of the most famous rally stage in the world.  So legendary that Colin McRae named his racehorse after it, though Peter O’Sullevan was pleased that he never had to commentate at any meeting it competed in. A place that every rally fan knows about, that rally drivers have made legendary but few outside of Finland can even pronounce.  

Tunnock’s World Rally Team co-driver and the only Scot competing in the WRC this year, Stuart Loudon takes us through his experiences of this section of rally folklore to see if the legend really is all it is hyped up to be:

“Finland is such a specialist event with the number of blind crests, the wide roads and the sheer continuous high speed of the whole weekend but Ouninpohja is the highlight.  Before the rally started I had watched the onboard with Petter Solberg from 2003 so many times on YouTube.  Not so much for Petter’s driving but to try and understand how his co-driver, Phil Mills could manage to get so much information from the pace notes to his driver at such huge speeds.  Petter’s notes system sounds really complicated, there is so much information in it.  Rob and I have a fairly basic system that works well for us.  The difference in Finland was that we had to grade the jumps as well as the corners.  A slow jump would be a ‘Jump 3’ whilst one that was taken flat out would be ‘Jump 6’.  Then we had to mix this into the corners so we could have a note going ‘5 Left over Jump 4’.” said the MSA Team UK member.

On a World Rally Championship event the competitors get to check the special stages twice before tackling them competitively.  However the speed during the reconnaissance is strictly controlled to 80kph (50mph). 

“During recce you are guessing at some points just where you think you may jump or not.  Ouninpohja has 169 jumps in it.  That’s one every 200 metres. I have to admit that we didn’t every one right.  I could hear a deep breath from Rob every now and again when the car had taken off when he didn’t expect it.  I was too busy with my head down reading the notes to really notice.”

“That’s the thing, I had done the stage the year before in the Fiesta R2 but now in the Fiesta R5 everything is happening SO much faster.  The traction out of the corners is great but the way it lands from a jump is just phenomenal.  It lands so well.”

“I tried to use the experience from 2012 to say to Rob at the start line ‘are you ready for this? Forget about your time in here, just enjoy it, all the guys around us have done this many times before, just relax.’  Seventeen minutes later all I got from him at the end was ‘wow.’  He doesn’t believe in exaggerating things. I don’t think I have ever talked so much in 20 minutes.  About the longest straight in the whole stage is around 200 metres.  You only get a chance to take a breath and it all starts again.  I had 20 pages of notes for this one stage.”

“Some crews split long stages into sections but we looked to treat this stage as one.  There is a natural split just after the Kakaristo hairpin, where Craig Breen crashed heavily last year.  From here to the finish the road really narrows.  It is not any slower than the bit you have just done; it’s just that the trees are a lot closer to the road.  You have to be really neat and precise.  The surface is so hard that there is loads of grip and the sensation of speed is incredible.”

So after all the hype, the story of legends, the tales of heroes and zeros from this one stage that everyone in the rallying world knows; is it the place of legend or a great piece of marketing from the Finns?

“It’s not folklore, it is just so special.  From the milliseconds that you get to look up from the notes all the Finnish fans are there passionately pushing you on, wishing you a great result no matter what your nationality.  The stage is such a rush.  The speed is so high, you get no time to think, and you just have to function, to do your role in reading the notes.  I have dreamed of competing over the Col du Turini stage on the Monte Carlo Rally: I’ve now done it.  I have dreamed of competing over Ouininpohja: I’ve now done it twice and it is SO much better in a R5 car.”

So the legend of Ouninpohja could deserve World Heritage status just like Loch Ness.  Drumnadrochit is nearly as unpronounceable, but Milnagavie (mill-guy) is probably one of the best in Scotland, or maybe Avoch (och). 

Full details on Rob and Stuart’s weekend are available on www.robertbarrable.com.

The next event for the Tunnock’s World Rally Team is ADAC Rally Deutschland over the weekend of 22nd – 25th August.  This event is over 225 miles on asphalt.  They also have unpronounceable stage names, such as Grafschaft.

Follow Stuart on Twitter – @stu_loudon or search on Facebook for ‘Stuart Loudon.’

After leading the BRC round, the RSAC Scottish Rally, from the second stage until the second last stage, Welshman, Osian Pryce, who was joint leader of the Championship going into the weekend, came away from Scotland with no points, retiring with gearbox issues at the start of the last stage. 

Pryce, from Machynlleth, Powys with Dale Furniss alongside, was annoyed with himself at dropping 2 seconds on Friday’s only short spectator stage to Dan McKenna in an identical Citroen DS3 but started his charge early on Saturday to take the lead and was not headed until his retirement.

“We could have continued to the end but the gearbox was getting worse and I don’t know whether we would have made it or not.  We then decided to treat this rally as dropped score from our Championship and retire.  This may be a gamble but to have driven on would have meant a total loss on the gearbox, whilst it might be repairable just now.”

“Towards the end of the stage after service it wouldn’t take 2nd gear, it just went from 1st to 3rd.  This continued on the next stage.  It’s a sequential ‘box so I was having to double shift to get through where 2nd should have been.  This was losing us more time.  Then on the 9th stage it smashed through 3rd gear as well and we only had 1st to 4th gears.  With SS10 having an uphill start and a lot of tight corners we would have done more damage by continuing.” sums up a dejected Pryce.  “We even got a puncture on that stage in a really fast section that put us off up a bank for a bit.”

“Even before then, on the longest stage my window dropped out.  The dust that was coming into the car was incredible.  I could hardly see as it was just circulating around the car.  It was 14 miles that stage but it could have been 114 miles to me.  I have never felt like I was going to be ill whilst driving before but I was there, with swallowing all that grit.”

McKenna finished to take his second maximum points this year and move into the lead of the Championship.  The next round is on the Irishman’s home soil, the Ulster Rally. 

“The Ulster is going to be exciting, it’s Dan’s home round but we will have No.1 on the door and I’m really looking forward to the battle and to getting these points back.” said a determined Pryce.

Please contact Iain Campbell for hi-res images. Details below.

Welshman Osian Pryce, with co-driver Dale Furniss have taken overall victory on the opening round of the British Rally Championship (BRC), the Pirelli Carlisle RB Foundation Rally winning by 46 seconds after 10 stages.  This is the fourth consecutive BRC victory for Pryce since last August’s Rally Northern Ireland and was sealed with fastest times on nine of the ten gravel special stages that made up the rally. 

Osian says, “Very happy, everything went to plan. We came here to win, but it’s my fifth time on the Pirelli and probably the first time I’ve had any luck on it, so it’s very long overdue. They were just great stages, probably the smoothest Pirelli Rally I’ve done and we quickly realised that at 90 per cent we could still beat Daniel (McKenna), so that’s what we did. We haven’t taken any risks at all.”

“Today has been very slippy and that has made it more challenging.  But we have taken no risks, kept it all in the middle of the road, avoided everything that may have been on our line and driven at 90% to deliver this victory.  I know that I have more speed to come should I need to deliver it.” 

The Pirelli Rally is mostly based in the largest man-made forest complex in Europe, Kielder Forest, or Killer Kielder as it is known in rallying circles.  It is the different nature of these forest roads that Osian has never mastered before but the 21-year old who started rallying at 16 in Latvia, served up a master-class this weekend. 

“To have 9 fastest stage times out of ten is great but you do think I could have gone quicker on that one that got away.  SS6 had some huge rocks that were pulled out on to the line and we decided to drive round them all as there was no need to take risks.  Senslible at the time but now it is all over, it would have been nice to have got a clean sweep.” says a confident Osian. 

The victory gives Pryce and Furniss full points for the opening round of the Championship with another five to go.  As well as leading the British Championship, they now lead the BRC Gravel Cup and Citroen Racing Cup as well. 

“We were determined to get strong points on the board from this one.  Saturday was very tricky as the stages, especially on the first loop were very loose and the car moved around a lot.  But come the afternoon stages they were down more to the hard base and were really enjoyable, good fast stages that are great to drive.  Today was more of keeping our lead and I’d found a pace I was happy with, so we just stuck with that.”

Dale says, “The notes worked really well, something that is really important on this event as there are so many crests and the speed is so high.  We weren’t sure of the pace of the others and because we had finished last year on such a high, the pressure was really on us to fail.  But we drove sensibly, didn’t take and risks and Osian and the whole team did a great job.  I can’t wait for the tarmac now!”

The next round of the British Rally Championship moves from Forestry Commission gravel stages to the closed public roads around the Scottish Borders, The Jim Clark Rally based in Kelso over the weekend of 30th and 31st May.

Thanks to Jakob Ebrey Motorsport Photography for the images.

Scotland’s cricket team may not be at the top of the World game but Uddingston’s Stuart Loudon has just returned from his second World Rally Championship podium of 2014 and is now preparing for his next challenge to become an all-rounder sitting beside England cricket star, Graeme Swann.  Swann took 255 test wickets during his career.

Swann, who has an interest in cars but has never competed on a rally before has entered a Fiesta R2 on Britain’s round of the World Rally Championship, Wales Rally GB.  It really is in at the deep end for the right-arm off spinner when he tackles the National element of the UK star event as part of a programme for BT Sport, where he is a brand ambassador.  Yesterday, (Tuesday 4th November) was the first day that Swann got to drive the Castol, WRC and Michelin backed Fiesta on gravel, only 9 days before the flags drops for the start of Wales Rally GB. 

Stuart spent the day teaching his new driver just what a pace-note is, what they mean and just what to listen for, “we are using a 1-6 pace note system on Rally GB, where 6 is fast and 1 is the slowest corner.  So today was getting Graeme to listen to what each call means.  It was also for him to spend time with David Higgins (multiple USA Rally Champion) to learn how the car reacts on the stages and how he influences that.”

This week has seen the start of the steep learning curve for the cricketer.  Monday was spent at an airfield just learning about the car.  This was actually the first time the England star had ever sat in a rally car.  His tutor then was M-Sport WRC star, Elfyn Evans who demonstrated just how to control and set the car up for different corners.  When Swann tried it, he ended up throwing a googly as they ended up on the grass at the side of the runway.

“He’s not lacking in confidence,” says Stuart, “my job will be to get him through the stages, to watch his driving and make sure he doesn’t’ get carried away with it.  But then as the rally goes on we can pick up the pace and the most important thing is to make sure he enjoys it.  We are not there to be a night watchman of the rally world.”

How the retired cricketer, turned TV pundit and Tunnock’s biscuit engineer get on will be captured on camera for an hour long broadcast on BT Sport later in the year.  In the car Stuart may be the most experienced but outside the car he is the one needing coaching. “This having a camera follow you everywhere and presenters looking for comments as soon as you get to service is all new to me.  I hope that Graeme can give me some pointers and maybe I can retire from this co-driving lark and become a TV presenter?”

Whatever happens the crew are there to perform to their best on the National section of Wales Rally GB.  What they don’t want is loads of sledging about the stage times from the other competitors and to bowl more of a yorker. 

Wales Rally GB gets underway with a Ceremonial Start and Autograph session on Thursday 13th November, Eirias Stadium, Colwyn Bay.  Full event details are available on www.walesrallygb.com

Friday 14th November – National Rally
09.44 – four special stages totalling 45.29 miles

Saturday 15th November – National Rally
09.57 – five special stages totalling 35.98 miles

Sunday 16th November – National Rally
12.03 – four special stages totalling 15.70 miles

Look out for Graeme Swann/Stuart Loudon Ford Fiesta R2 – car number 277

Cricketing terms:

Diddley Dobbly – bowler of limited skill
All-rounder – adept at bowling and batting
Googly – deceptive spinning delivery by a leg spin bowler
Night watchman – a lower order batsman sent in when the light is dimming to play out the remaining overs.
Sledging – verbal abuse
Yorker – A perfectly pitched fast Yorker is almost impossible to keep out

Follow Stuart on:

Website – www.stuartloudon.co.uk

Twitter – @stu_loudon

Facebook – Stuart Loudon

A cracked gearbox in the Tunnock’s World Rally Team Ford Fiesta R5 cost Robert Barrable and Uddingston’s Stuart Loudon a competitive result on Britain’s round of the World Rally Championship, Wales Rally GB.  The gearbox cooler cracked on Friday and with only a ‘remote service’; where limited repairs and parts can be fitted to the car under the sporting regulations, the CA1 Sport technicians came up with an ingenious plan to try to effect temporary repairs.

Stuart, grandson of Thomas Tunnock Ltd boss Boyd Tunnock, used the body of his Tunnock’s pen to repair the burst pipe.  CA1Sport by passed the gearbox cooler, linking the two pipes together by using the pen as a stent that was then tie wrapped in place.  The plan was to use this temporary repair to get the team through the re-running of the afternoon’s three stages.  Once back on the road the pressure in the system was too great for the repair and the ‘box started to loose oil once again.  The team pulled over to avoid running the gearbox dry and destroying it. 

Stuart says, “The night time stages on Thursday were great and we were happy with our steady pace to be fifth in WRC-2 at the end of the day.  The plan was to build on this during the daylight tests on Friday.  But on the last stage before the remote service the power steering failed.  The Welsh forests are full of hairpins and we had to stop to reset the electronic systems to get the steering back working, this cost us a lot of time and then the cooler in the gearbox broke.”

“OK this is our last event of 2013 and while we have had two podiums, this is also our third SupeRally event; where we have missed stages through issues and then come back out later on the event with loads of penalty times.  We are both pretty gutted.”

Throughout the year the team have used their six events to gain experience of the stages and to perfect their pace notes. Saturday and Sunday’s stages were used to get more time in the car and to continue to look to set top five stage times in WRC-2. 

“Rally GB had a new route and location for this year and the crowds lining the stages were brilliant.  So we decided that we needed to entertain them a bit more, cos we were not going to get a result on this event and just wanted to have some more fun.  Rob had a great time throwing it a bit more sideways than normal and giving it plenty of big slides.  I was delighted at the number of Saltires that I saw, the Scottish support means a lot.”

So after six events taking in; Portugal, Finland, Germany, France, Spain and Wales the Tunnock’s World Rally Team have finished every round, bar Germany, gained huge experience and introduced mainland Europe to the taste of Tunnock’s chocolate. 

Follow Stuart on:

www.stuartloudon.co.uk
Facebook – Stuart Loudon
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Paul Beaton was taught by his father at the age of 14 the skills of how to read a map.  Paul took these skills to start competing on Highland Car Club Navigational Road Rallies.  Now, he has used these basic skills to clinch the MSA BTRDA Rally Championship, sitting beside driver, Euan Thorburn in a Ford Focus World Rally Car.  And this was all done on the last round of the series that went to a tiebreaker.

“After winning the title on Saturday, whilst at the prize-giving for the Cambrian Rally, I was thinking of my dad showing me over how a rally works all these years ago and now here I was clinching one of the Home Counties titles. It is a long way from navigating the lanes around the back of Inverness,” says Paul. 

Thorburn, from the Borders town of Jedburgh and Paul have lead every rally they have contested this year.  Only mechanical issues have stopped more victories coming, however the haul of silverware includes six outright victories from 15 events.  Contesting both the Scottish Championship and the English/Welsh BTRDA Championship has made it a busy year for the duo and their ex-Carlos Sainz Ford Focus. 

“Since February there has been at least two rallies every month.  It has been relentless in the travelling to and from events but it has also meant that we have always been ‘match-fit’ and right on the pace. It is only now that both series are over that we can reflect on what we have achieved.”

“Winning the BTRDA last weekend, makes up for the disappointment of a fortnight ago where we lost out on the Scottish Rally Championship on the last few corners of the last stage with a puncture.  This meant that David Bogie took the event win and the Championship once again.  That was a hard one to take.” 

From starting out navigating with David Munro on the Road Rallies whilst still at school Paul has worked his way up the rallying ranks to be one of the countries top co-drivers.  It hasn’t all been rallying though, there was a break for a while when Inverness Caledonian Thistle took his attention when playing for the second team.  But persistent badgering from Foyer’s Ian Munro got him out on the forest stages for the Peugeot 205 Ecosse Challenge. 

“On that first event back out we thought that we had won, until the times came in for this car running at the back of the field who had beaten us all.  That was the first time that the name Euan Thorburn came to my attention.”

It wasn’t until 2010 that the pair became a team when they contested the international series, the British Rally Championship.  This was great experience for them to learn their trade at the top UK level and to start to make their own pace-notes (the descriptions of the road ahead) that are vital to ensure the utmost top speed throughout each Special Stage. 

“My role on the special stages is to describe the road ahead to Euan so that he knows what is coming up but to also know what gear and speed he should be tackling each corner or crest in.  Such is the speed and the information that I need to get out that I am reading three or four corners ahead of where we actually are.  Where my seat is in the car, it is so low, to keep the centre of gravity down, that I can’t see out of the window, so not only am I reading well in advance, I am having to navigate as to where we actually are by the feeling of the corners going through the seat.  Literally co-driving by the seat of my pants.” 

Out of the stages and Paul takes on an ‘office manager’ role. It is his job to get Euan to where he has to be on time, to ensure that the team of mechanics are where they are supposed to be to meet the car and with the correct amount of fuel and tyres ready for them.  All of these schedules have to be prepared in advance of all the rallies and it takes a lot of time to work out all the logistics that are required. 

Now heading into their fifth year as a team, the crew have developed a great understanding of what is required to be on the ultimate pace.  Paul recalls lying fourth overall on the RACMSA Rally of Scotland in 2010, starting the Loch Ard stage that was being broadcast live around the world on Eurosport and their car had a in-car camera and both had microphones. 
“You don’t think about the fact that you are live on TV when you are tackling a stage and you especially don’t think about it when you leave the road and roll just a couple of miles in from the start.  It was around 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning and my language was a bit colourful for that time of day when the car eventually stopped in the ditch. People still give me a hard time about that.” 

“But it is that level of event, taking on the best of Europe where we want to be in 2014.  It will take a lot of budget but with the speed, consistency and the wins we have had this year there is no reason why we can’t take Scottish rallying further into Europe than just England and Wales that we visited and conquered this year.”

International rallying, worldwide live television and all started from navigational rallies as a fourteen year-old.  Now Euan and Paul will take on their biggest challenge over the weekend of 15th-17th November when the take part in Wales Rally GB National event as the top seed.

The world of motor sport is full of engineering brilliance.  Engineers analyse mountains of data to gain fractions of seconds, to save milligrams of weight from each corner to look to gain an advantage over their competitors.  In the 1950s carbon fibre was the big discovery; this lightweight, heat defiant and extremely strong material has transformed many areas of motor sport through enhanced speed, strength and additional safety. 

The 1950s was also a time of immense change for Thomas Tunnock Ltd.  Thomas’ son Archie Tunnock developed the Caramel Wafer, grandson Tom, the Teacake and Tom’s younger brother, Boyd engineered the initial production in the factory to satisfy the huge demand for the wafers. 

The factory is still on the original bakery site and the production lines now rely on robots with laser eyes synchronising with their carbon fibre arms to collate, package and box the 10 million biscuits that are produced weekly from the Tunnock’s factory in Uddingston.  There are two of these multi-million pound robots working on the wafers and teacakes.  They are German engineered but maintained by Boyd Tunnock’s grandson, Stuart Loudon.

This coming weekend Stuart will be heading to Germany, not to learn more about the Schubert Packing Machines but to contest his third round of the World Rally Championship alongside Irishman, Robert Barrable in their CA1 Sport prepared Ford Fiesta R5 resplendent in Tunnock’s colours.

Round 9 of the WRC starts in Cologne on Thursday 22 August, with two late afternoon stages (near Blankenheim and Sauteral) held on the route back to the event’s base in Trier. The following three days of competition takes place on various types of sealed-surface roads, with bumpy, narrow and switchback stages through the Mosel vineyards, fast and flowing roads through the Saarland countryside (which are treacherously slippery when wet) and on the abrasive concrete roads of the Baumholder tank training military area – infamously lined with unforgiving kerbstones, known as hinkelsteins. 

After a fabulous second place in Portugal and a point-scoring place on the fast roads of Finland Stuart is looking forward to this event taking place on asphalt, “Rob has done a great job on the two gravel events but tarmac is his surface.  He practices a lot with a kart and has even taken part in Formula Ford races in Ireland to keep up to speed about how a car preforms on tar.”

“Last weekend’s run at the Tyneside Stages was really about us getting familiar with the car.  It wasn’t to get a result or to look at times but to see how everything performed.  The R5 is just phenomenal; the way it stops is incredible. I feel so at home and comfortable in this car.” 

“Germany is like three events in one.  There are the stages through the Mosel vineyards that are very tight, where you have to be so neat and tidy as well as fast.  Then there are the stages around the Saarland area that takes you through the forests.  This is a bit like Barum Czech Rally Zlin where Rob and I were 5th last year, so we are looking forward to these stages.  Then there are the stages around the US Army Garrison base, H D Smith Barracks or Arena Panzerplatte that is the longest stage on the event at almost 28 miles.  This is probably the most famous stage of the event due to the hinklesteins that are there to keep the tanks on the road.”

During Rally Finland just ten days ago, whilst changing a puncture on special stage 11 Stuart badly burnt his left-hand when putting the wheel away in the back of the car, “I was holding the tyre and it slipped from my grip, instinctively I grabbed the wheel centre to stop it falling but it was red hot.  My hand was badly burned. Fortunately there was a 50km road section next and I opened my drinks camel back and stuck my hand in there for the next hour to try and cool it down.”

Whilst the injury is healing the blisters are still prevalent and the fingertips are still tender.  Not something that is handy when you have to read pages and pages of pace notes at speed in a rally car, especially as Arena Panzerplatte has over 100 junctions in its 28 miles.  To try and protect the injury Stuart will wear a cotton surgical glove with a latex glove over the top of this to keep it all clean. 

“It was a stupid mistake in Finland but the latex glove seemed to work at the weekend.  I have gloves in my bag for changing the wheels but I thought I could save time by not taking them out.  From now on they will be taped to the door of the car so that they are easy to get at and this doesn’t happen again.”

A Schubert Packaging Machine will pack 600 Tunnock’s Teacakes in a minute, the Tunnock’s World Rally Team Fiesta R5 will cover 600 metres in a matter of seconds yet both chocolate and motorsport all depend on engineering brilliance to deliver the best; brilliance that has taken years to perfect.

ADAC Rallye Deutschland – Itinerary
Thursday 22nd August  – 16:00 – 19:58 two stages
Friday 23rd August  – 10:41 – 17:53 six stages
Saturday 24th August – 08:03 – 16:51 six stages
Sunday 25th August  – 09:18 – 11:36 two stages

Follow Stuart on Twitter – @stu_loudon or search on Facebook for Stuart Loudon