Historic Rallying had a huge weekend just gone with four major events taking place in very different geographic areas.

HERO Classic Marathon

Probably the biggest was HERO’s Classic Marathon, a seven day regularity event running from Lecce in the ‘heel’ of Italy all the way to Brescia in the north. The rally long battle was between Porsche driving business partners Charles (Chas) Colton, navigated by Ryan Pickering and Howard Warren with his son Matt in the passenger seat. The Warrens led after the second day but thereafter Colton and Pickering were in charge though never by more than a few seconds until the final day when a small mistake let the gap increase to 44 seconds. This let Paul Bloxidge and Andy Pullan in a later Porsche not eligible for awards into second position.

Another Porsche, the 914/6 of Andrew and Sarah Mallagh was next up, followed by the beautiful Series One E-Type of Marcus Anderson and Matthew Rose, a tremendous performance by the inexperienced crew.

Photo Credit: F&R Rastrelli

Donegal International Rally

In the Historic section of the Donegal International Rally it was Mk 2 Escorts all the way and total domination by Northern Ireland crew Seamus O’Connell and Sean Magee who won as they pleased. The final gap was three minutes after two hours of special stages with Cork men John and Sean Moynihan next up followed by ex-pat Ulstermen Ernie and Will Graham.

Photo Credit: Juha Bos.

Rally Lana – Italian Historic Series

Escort mounted Callum Guy and Andrew Roughead travelled all the way to Italy to compete in the Rally Lana round of the Italian Historic series and came away with seventh place, just not able to keep up with the local crews. A great variety of cars contested the event and Marco Bianchini won by 36 seconds in his glorious Lancia 037 from the Audi Quattro of Davide Negri with the Porsche 911 RS of Nicholas Montini only 9 seconds further adrift.

Photo credit:   F.M.Bianchi
East Anglian Classic – HRCR Road Rally Series
The East Anglian Classic was a round of the HRCR Road Rally series but suffered from a small entry as many of the regulars were in Italy for the Classic Marathon.  Gavin and Carrie Rogers took full advantage of this and a bias towards test penalties to win comfortably in their unusual but powerful Reliant Scimitar from an Escort in the hands of John Ruddock and Nick Cooper. They were just ahead of Jim Deacon/David Taylor in an MGB who performed best on the regularities.  The Rogers were only 11th best on the regularities but one minute quicker than anyone else over the special tests.  Steve Entwhistle and Andy Ballantyne just missed that third place by one second in the vivid orange Mini.

Photo credit: M&H Photography