‘Woh! We’re going to Barbados!’

Biggest entry; highest number of foreign crews; biggest parties yet…Rally Carnival 2003 was a massive motorsport craic. Martin Sharp provides the overview; Carlin Gerbich reports back from strutting his pacenote stuff over the treacherous Bajan tarmac

If you witnessed Timo Mäkinen’s unbroken string of three RAC Rally victories in BDA Escorts, you might recall Captain Tobias Wilcox’s spoken intro, welcoming passengers aboard Coconut Airways’ Flight 372 to Bridgetown just before the Totally Tropical band hits that evocative chorus of its 1975 number one hit ‘Barbados’ used as the headline here.

Skip forward 27 years to the end of April: among the 30 rally cars scattered around the Geest banana boat terminal at Southampton docks was Kevin Procter’s Sapphire Cosworth. It was adorned with a cleverly conceived aluminium box roof-and-bonnet rack full of spares: along both sides of said box was the legend; ‘Woh! We’re going to Barbados!’

The 2003 Barbados Rally Carnival was go.

Now, if you were on Virgin VS 29 a month later, as it lined-up to approach Grantley Adams airport, you may remember the Captain wishing: ‘The best of luck to all you Rally Carnival people,’ adding his sincere congratulations for having drunk the 747’s bars dry!

Rally Carnival had begun… Properly.

Two Jumbo-loads were needed to airlift some 800 European Rally Carnival people to the Caribbean. Every spare corner of the capacious holds of the MV Santa Catharina contained a rally car. Cars from England, Wales, both bits of Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Finland and Austria had already arrived on the Santa Catharina, while other overseas entries from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and St Vincent and the Grenadines boosted the Carnival entry to a full-house 93 cars.

As regular readers will know, Rally Carnival is the antithesis of the ‘turn up and drive, couple of shandies after the finish before the long drive home’ kind of event. There is no event like it; there is never a long drive home on the 166 square mile tropical island of Barbados; everybody on the island knows the Carnival’s on; damn-near everybody on the island loves motor sport: and everybody is more welcoming and hospitable than most Anglo-Saxons could believe. And I, for one, have never heard the word ‘shandy’ used on the island…

Hardly a surprise then that the Carnival just gets bigger and better: a straw pole at the rally prizegiving party – purely in the interests of science, and before rum amnesia hit – saw the vast majority of overseas competitors promising to be back next year: it’s their privilege to have an entry, so you’d better bang an entry in now if what you see here seems attractive.

And: how could it not? The non-damaging Sunbeach RallySprint and the two-day, 100 mile-long, slippery and technical tarmac Rally Barbados flanking a week of organised, disorganised and impromptu parties in a totally tropical laid-back and welcoming atmosphere – with some serious surf to play in during recovery. See what I mean?

In every single facet of motor sport there are heroic acts. But in Rally Carnival, each is recognised and rewarded, with due enthusiasm and compassion. This is the Carnival’s third year, Martin Stockdale has contested every one, is now a local hero; known as ‘Mad-Dale’ to the fans. His drove BMW E36 3-Series club rally car totally sideways in 2001; the amassed stage-side spectators punched air and jumped-up vociferously in recognition. Less sideways the following year in the same car he took the class. Respect.

This quiet man from Nottinghamshire then built a new car for this year’s Carnival: an E46 coupé… powered by a Beemer 4-litre V8 on Wilcox slide injection. Having a ‘proper’ job to do as well, Stockdale and his mates built the car on evenings and weekends. Flat-out two-am workshop stints weren’t enough to make the Santa Catharina banana boat cut, so another boat was found, exclusively for the new Mad-Dale Beemer. He bent it a bit in the RallySprint, got the bent bits fixed, finished the RallySprint… and picked up the gong for class victory in the rally. Hero status.

When Stockdale bought his V8 from Terry Pankhurst, the latter was putting the finishing touches to his, entirely self-built, Pug 206 WRC/Cosworth; an enterprising and admirable piece of kit that you read about in CCC July ’03 [if you didn’t, shame on you; get the Back Issue from XXXXX.] When he saw Pankhurst’s Frog/Bifsteak hybrid, Stockdale told Pankhurst that the only place for it to debut is Barbados.

Which it did, acquitting itself admirably during the RallySprint, despite constant running repairs to ex-Cossie recce car Group N front struts of ‘Plasticine’ rigidity. Said drawback re-engineered, Terry and co-driver Amanda Craven suffered the ignominious downside of going off on the first stage of the rally the following weekend, as The Gerb describes in his accompanying piece about sitting next to Andrew Hurley through his Puma Cossie’s Caribbean Adventure. Amanda was a bit shaken. But not stirred: when asked whether they’d be back next year, the couple enthused in synch: "Yeah! Definitely!"

Motor sport is an integral constituent in Bajan blood; beating the local drivers is a major undertaking, only achieved since the international rally began in 1990 by Ulsterman Kenny McKinstry’s wins in 1993 and ’96, and Jamaican Jeffrey Panton’s victory in 1998. Local hotshoe Trevor ‘Electric Micey’ Manning won the rally in 1999, but Barbadian driver Roger ‘The Sheriff’ Skeete has dominated the international rally since it began, although a failed quill shaft in his Escort Cosworth after landing from the big jump at the end of the first stage bang onto the timing equipment put paid to his efforts this year. Still, nine out of 14 events deserves respect.

Yet this year, 55-year old Austrian Josef Pointinger and his well-used [London-Mexico, London-Sydney, Panama-Alaska, and East African Safari Rally this December] yet well-useful, World Cup Rally Escort Mexico replica [built from an immaculate 1100 he bought from an Austrian priest’s estate!] beat the best at the Carnival’s RallySprint. OK, handicaps applied, but Josef, and wife Gertrude also acquitted themselves well on the rally, finishing second in class and 26th overall. No mean achievement.

Arguably more admirable was James McKeefry’s performance. And he wasn’t even driving. McKeefry can always be relied on to produce the sort of one-liners only an Irishman can pull off his cuff. The sort of bloke who’s renowned for after-dinner antics at motor club get-togethers, James was co-driving compatriot John Keatley, 1995 and ’96 British Historic Rally Champion, in his immaculate 1974 Mk1 Escort RS1600. Now, James’ eyesight isn’t so good… whenever he meets Ulster rallying guru-ess Liz Patterson he keeps the standing joke going and asks whether she’s finally got round to doing his pace notes in Braille yet.

So, he’s reading pace notes on some fairly technical Barbadian stages: every time they passed me stageside James had the notes two to three inches from his nose, feeling the car, never looking at the road.

Keatley and McKeefry got that beautiful red Escort to 16th overall, and well into a class win on the rally. ’Nuff respect. Also from over the Irish Sea came Drexel Gillespie and Gill Cotton with Drexel’s Historic Mk2 Lotus Cortina. The combined Keatley and Gillespie crews guaranteed great value on and off the stages in true Carnival spirit.

Then there were treats like Finnish rally film-maker Antero Mikkulainen.

‘Andy’ turned 50 just before the Carnival. His birthday present? A properly rally prepared 1965 Alfa Romeo GTV… and an entry to the Rally Carnival. Yawn-bore? Don’t you believe it: Mr Mikkulainen grabbed that very tidy car by the scruff of the neck and simply threw it down the RallySprint track and rally stages with aplomb. Impressive? The way that yellow Italian car responded to Andy’s flamboyant style would have amazed even somebody who worked for Alfa Corse in the 1960s.

After a year away from rallying, Kenny Hall and his popular team of Scottish lunatics brought their Suzuki-engined Corsa to a well-deserved 22nd overall and second in class to local Neil Barnard’s tidily driven Swindon-engined version.

After an excursion on the Stewarts Hill stage on Saturday previous evening, an all-nighter saw the suspension of Yorkshireman Kevin Procter’s Sapphire Cosworth now almost straight. Although out of contention for overall honours, he was still on the pace, entertaining the vociferous spectators and claiming a group fastest time into the bargain.

At the sharp end of Rally Barbados Paul ‘Surfer’ Bourne and Louis Venezia led in their Impreza WRC until it hit a rock, damaging the rear suspension and wheel in a stage. Repairs took time, missed planned emergency refuelling became unplanned panic refuelling… which made Bourne OTL at SS26, Sailor Gully, so he was deemed to have started only 27 stages of the 28 total, excluding him from the overall results, although still in with a shot at Modified Nine class honours, which he took home.

Behind Bourne, locals Roger Hill and Group N leader Barry Gale in their Celica GT4 and Lancer Evo VI respectively were unaware of Bourne’s OTL status, and both thoughts they were battling for second place, while they were actually contesting the lead…

Gale led Hill once on the rally, but there had never been more than 36 seconds between them all event, Hill’s winning margin over Gale at the end of a fascinating contest being less than eight seconds. Roger Hill also won the Modified 8 class, while Barry Gale drove his heart out to win Group N and place second overall. Gale’s Lancer Evo VI also netted category fastest in the rally’s two superspecials and the previous weekend’s Sunbeach RallySprint, a meritorious performance which earned him the ‘King of the

Carnival’ award and made him the inaugural recipient of the Andrew Phillips Memorial Trophy.

Also flying was a ‘foreigner’, Jamaican Gary Greg in his Evo VI. With fellow countryman John Powell’s Evo VII also in the top 10 at seventh overall, Gary Greg’s third overall produced the best result for Jamaican crews in Barbados since 1998, when they claimed five of the top 10 places.

There’s simply not enough space here to mention every bit of derring done during the ’03 Carnival… believe us, there was lots. Brit Harold ‘Doc’ Morley, who used to campaign 911s in early ’70s British rallies, drove well to get his Group N Impreza to ninth overall; but he can’t be counted as a European visitor because he lives in Barbados a fair bit of the time. In fact the highest placed Euro visitor was Austrian Willi Polesznig in his 12th placed Evo VI, with crazy Irish Keatley and mad Scot Hall the next highest Euros overall in 16th and 22nd respectively.

There’s loads of respect due to every competitor – on and off the stages – of this year’s Rally Carnival, but buckets of it must go to impressive young Barbadian driver Barry Mayers. On Friday morning before Rally Barbados, Barry’s mates were doing final tidying to his 4AGE-engined rear-drive Toyota Starlet [still the mainstay of Bajan rallying and the biggest, 17-entry, Modified Open class, on the event.]

That same Friday morning, Barry was sitting a business studies exam in England, thereby missing direct scheduled flights to Barbados. After the exam it took him 24 hours to fly a convoluted route to Barbados via Canada and Trinidad, during which he slept for one hour. He arrived at 0830 on Saturday morning; an hour before the rally start.

By the Sunday finish, young Mayers had blitzed the class; his Starlet finishing a superb sixth overall. Did we say respect?

However you look at it, 4000 miles is a hell of a long way to go to rally. Particularly when you’ve saved the entry money yourself. Particularly when you’ve planned and sweated bullets to get everything there, on time. And particularly when you’re staring down the barrel of event retirement after just half a day of the two day Barbados Rally. But the evidence was right in front of me as we hoisted the car up and whipped the wheels off at McEnearney’s garage in Bridgetown after an off on SS10 on the first day of the annual event. The front and rear struts were bent, the steering arm, track rod rose joint and drum stick were bent, and the carbon air ducting which feeds the radiators was extensively cracked. Fixable, but given time – and we risked further damage to the car should we have not nailed the repairs perfectly. For Andrew, the choice was simple but tough. The damage had come after the heavens had opened up dumped the island’s annual rainfall quota down in a 10-minute drenching. The rain had turned the roads slick – and on the 300 metre straight which preceded the slow 90 left which caught us out, Andrew’s 350bhp de-restricted Puma was spinning its rear wheels like a go-kart on nitrous. It was scary, and once the fronts locked under braking, our exit from the rally was relatively swift. Not that the rally had been all bad from True Colour Rallying’s perspective. In fact, up until that point, we’d been plugging along quite nicely. Our plan was to simply finish the event, and with the three others in our class out of the running after a series of problems, we weren’t really pushing as the rally started its second leg of four. Poor Terry Pankhurst and Amanda Craven exited the rally in slightly more spectacular style on the very first stage when the lovely 206 WRC replica drifted off the road and clobbered a power pole. Running through the cancelled stage Hangmans, Terry was – as we all were – running quickly in order to make the next time control on time. We’d been delayed at the start after Roger Skeete hurled his Escort over the flying finish and landed on the timing gear. It had taken several minutes for the news to filter through to us, so we’d spent a few anxious moments in the time control wondering what the hell was going on. But timing between the stages was tight and it meant we couldn’t dawdle. The Barbados timing system means you are given a start time for the first stage and a liaison time for the next stage start time control. It works fine,

except when there are cock-ups or problems on the stages and the propensity for combined and complex timing issues arise. Poor Terry and Amanda had paid the consequences. I’d had my head down at the time, calling notes, and Andrew’s ashen face at the end of the stage illustrated just how serious the crash was. We had no time to stop and ponder their fate. We had just a handful of minutes and a lot of miles to cover, and with Barbados traffic travelling as if time had no consequence, filtering through the locals who didn’t seem to know that their rear view mirrors could be used for anything other than hanging things from was going to be tricky. We arrived at French Village with a minute to spare – but the time control was a mess and the chief marshal waved us back in to our cars. I ignored him and asked him to please book me in on time. "Did the organisers tell you to get out of your cars and walk up to us to book in?" he asked, bemused. "No, but it happens all over the world that way. Every event I’ve done in the UK. There’ll be one or two others that’ll do it today," I told him. I’d heard that stages are often held up for buses, but I never really believed it until I looked down the row of parked rally cars and saw one edging its way towards the start control. Martin Stockdale nearly lost a wing mirror as the driver doggedly drove his squeaking behemoth up the narrow tarmaced goat track with scant regard for little else other than delivering his stern looking cargo of crusties. I was even more amazed when the control marshalls waved him through and up the live stage while the rally cars were forced to wait until he cleared the stage. By now, I’d consumed three litres of water, sweated a bucket and was starting to ignore stupid things like the bus on the stage, or the sudden, truncated services because the rally was running over time. Or the co-driver queue in to service where, after the first loop of three stages, I was forced to run to the car and tell Andrew’s service crew they had 10 minutes to turn us around. The stages were brilliant, and despite our lowly times, both Andrew and I were having a ball. We’d experimented with tyres to try and get as much grip out of the Kumhos as we could, but there was nothing we could do to extract the grip we needed. It’s no fault of the tyres: there’s only a certain amount of grip possible when the surface you’re running on is polished coral embedded in soft tar. Compound that with a light sprinkling of sandy soil, and no tyre company in the world has the ability to manufacture a tyre to combat that. To be honest, we were on the best tyres available. Kumho had supplied the stickiest tyres they make, and the CO3s were superb in the dry – it’s just Barbados demands more of the driver. It’s almost like driving on gravel, and no matter how hard you work, getting heat in to the rubber is exceptionally difficult even with the high ambient temperatures. The tyres simply don’t get hot. Andrew’s more used to grippy tarmac – and with 350hp waiting to sling the back end around on boost, the Puma was an entertaining car to be a passenger in. But we simply couldn’t keep pace, and there’s no shame in admitting it. There’s a lot of hot drivers on the island – and quite a few who joined them from Europe, so it’s not the best place to take a car you’re concerned about damaging. The island is hewn from coral and limestone, and the metal on you car tends to give before the rock faces do. It’s a harsh environment, and you need to be a tough cookie to break it. Rain turns the roads slick – and no matter how many times you’ve experienced total loss of traction, everyone exercises caution. Which reflects in our times. After 10 complete stages, we were 68th out of 72 runners and third out of three remaining Group B cars. However, the corner which claimed us was a nasty one. It also claimed seven other cars – chief scrutineer Simon Gilmore was nearly one of them. The six inch curb we clobbered still had a considerable amount of rubber on it from our impact several days later – and our tyre tracks which gouged through a ditch and into a cane field came remarkably close to a rather solid looking power pole. However, the experience has stiffened my resolve to visit the event next year. I’ve unfinished business, and a little more rum and ginger to consume to help me through it all.

I’d hesitate to recommend anyone do the Barbados Rally. In fact, don’t go. I don’t want you going there and spoiling a great event, so don’t bother. No, don’t, because the weather’s terrible and the people are, sigh, really great and you’ll have an absolutely brilliant time. There. I admit it. Do the event. It’s simply great. Hearing cheering voices over my intercom is something I’ll not forget in a hurry. The Puma was one of seven foreign entries hosted by McEnearney Motors, and the crew there – particularly Mark Hamilton and Dave and Jeanne Crawford bent over backwards to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. They picked the cars up from the port, reassembled the Puma, polished it up and made workshop space available for us when we got there. At the end of every day the car was used, they had a staff member on hand to clean the car for us – and when Skeete retired, his service crew split up and each found a team to help out. Dave had even copied his pace notes out for us, which saved us at least two days of hard slog compiling fresh notes, and had service staff on duty all Saturday night repairing Kevin Proctor’s Sierra Cosworth and Tom Ryan’s Proton Satria until 6am Sunday morning. There’s no way we can possibly thank them enough for their hospitality and help. I must also thank Greg and his ex-girlfriend Vicky (she’s a saint), Stones, Gary Clarke and John Thrupp (Kumho) for their help, and apologise to Barry Gale for holding him up on a wet Hangman’s – the stage in which Micey used his Evo V as a bulldozer and pushed 30 feet of bridge parapet in to the river below. Sorry Baz, we simply didn’t see you.