ALAN ROGERS HISTORIC ROAD RALLY - ROUND 4

The fourth and final round of the 2001 Championship saw a convincing win for the Championship Coordinator Andy Gibson, abley navigated in his MGB GT by Martin Neal. Father & Son crew Cliff & Paul Doe were second in their Riley 1.5, Paul collecting the top championship points from the event, while Peter Noad and Peter Cox in the orange Audi at 5th overall were the second placed Championship crew.

The Alan Rogers Historic Road Rally, run in Dorset on Sunday November 4th by the Woolbridge Motor Club, attracted 36 entries, 2/3 of which were chasing championship points. Seven special tests provided the widest possible variety of surfaces, from muddy tarmac at Canada Farm, to gravel "marbles" and incredibly grippy tarmac at Blandford Camp. Four regularity sections were a tough challenge for the navigators. The route for the two afternoon sections was issued as plot and bash route cards, causing the experts to sweat a little, but it was found too difficult for many novices, causing large penalties from missed controls. However all that got to the finish collected a reasonable number of championship points.

The HERO Challenge winning crew of Peter Pratt and Tony Pettie finished 11th Overall in the TR2, which was enough for Peter to confirm his overall win in the HRCR Drivers Championship, but Tony had to settle for second in the Navigator's Championship to Paul Robinson. Paul was navigating in Lawrence Burrage's Austin-Healey 100 but his championship hopes looked dashed when the Healey ground to a halt on the last regularity with fuel starvation. After loosing nine minutes they got going again and finished the rally. They dropped from 4th to 9th overall but Paul still managed to pip Tony by one point for the Championship.

The only retirement was the VW Beetle of Wesley Massam and Bernard Northmore which sadly put paid to their hopes of winning the Newcomers Challenge. Emma and Robert Henchoz finshed an excellent 15th overall in their Volvo Amazon, collecting enough points to win the 2001 Newcomers Challenge by a good margin from Phil Shingler and Eric Richardson.

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