Inside the BRC F2 Kit Car reunion

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the onboard.

The screaming sound of the Volkswagen, mated to the sharp Finnish pacenote calls from Kaj Lindström on that famous road that goes nowhere, but we know as Abbey St Bathans.

A couple of days before the magic, I’d seen this car for myself. Standing well back with ear defenders glued to my head, the tears streamed down my cheek as the Golf’s whale echoed across the field – matched only by my shrieks of terror.

In my defense, I’d never knowingly seen a rally car before and I was only three.

But within the fear, there was adoration. The sight of that blue body, set alive by the bright green wheels, sparked a reaction in me that ultimately led to me typing these words onto my keyboard.

That’s the last I remember of Tapio Laukkanen’s Golf. To be honest, I never thought I’d see it again. I’d never truly understand if this car was really that special, or if the little scraps of memory I have had formed a picture distorted from reality.

But then the invite came. Donagh Kelly was hosting a British Rally Championship reunion – centered on the Formula 2 Kit Car era of the late 1990s – at his Stables Motorsport Centre, reuniting the stars with their cars for a weekend of celebration.

In a tasteful harkback to eras gone by, the Stables is not an actively promoted place. A lot of what you hear may be fact, it may be fiction. Unless you’ve been, it’s all a tantalizing rumor.

So opening the door for the first time, I push instead of pull as the anticipation gets the better of me. It’s about to be a ‘never meet your heroes’ moment, or in this case: re-meet.

Rest assured, inside lives an embarrassment of riches spanning five decades of world rallying history – and enough Formula 2 cars to make me feel as if I’m scrolling the menu of Magnetic Fields’ Rally Championship computer game.

But as soon as I’m in, it might as well have been an empty room. My eyes only see one car.

That Golf.

There are no tears this time – simply gazes of awe. Just as well really, as crying over a rally car at 27 wouldn’t be a good look! But at least I’m not alone.

“I do have a memory as a kid of being five years old and having to go the doctors, I think I must have been getting some injection or something, and the doctor was trying to find something to calm me down to make me relax,” Eamonn Kelly, Donagh’s son and past Junior BRC champion, shared.

“He was asking what sport I was into and I said rallying, so he goes ‘tell me your favorite rally car’ and I said ‘TNT Volkswagen Golf F2.’

“So he goes ‘just think of that then’, so I do have fond memories. Yeah… what an era. And to see all those guys with the cars, reliving those memories, was class.”

Eamonn’s words encapsulate the power of rallying, and last weekend, in a nutshell. The premise was simple: relive old memories, but make some new ones.

The guest list mirrored that of an entry list from F2’s halcyon days in Great Britain. Alister McRae, Mark Higgins, Gwyndaf Evans, Robbie Head, Neil Wearden, Jarmo Kyotlehto, Neil Simpson, Kaj Lindström, Phil Mills, Howard Davies, Bryan Thomas, Trevor Agnew… and that’s just a few of them, all complemented by international stars Kris Meeke, Paul Nagle and the living legend Ari Vatanen.

For them to meet in the company of the cars that made them heroes made it all the more fitting. Witnessing Julian Porter see the Ford Escort Maxi Kit Car he campaigned in 1999 for the first time since that year’s Manx was touching. “If it wasn’t for people like Donagh, where would these cars go?” Porter wondered.

But not all the machines invoked good memories – Higgins imitating kicking the flawed Nissan Almera he drove in 1998 with a wide-eyed grin etched across his face told its own story. That would be balanced out by a seat in his Sunny: “This was a lovely car to drive,” he smiled.

An itinerary had been produced for the event – including a tour of the museum, passenger rides around the purpose-built track, a BRC quiz and (naturally) plenty of time in Donagh’s self-built Maggie’s Bar – but there was no strict schedule; no compulsory commitments.

Indeed, nobody there had to be there. Instead, they simply wanted to be. Plenty have kept in some form of contact with each other, but the opportunity to all get together had not happened for 25 years. And the chance to just spend a weekend socializing – with no rally or competition interrupting the craic – was to be cherished.

“What you’ve got to remember about this event,” Agnew told me, “is it’ll probably never happen again.”

If history does prove it to be a one-off, there can be no regrets it wasn’t done in style.

For those who partake, units of alcohol consumed per person definitely exceeded hours of sleep attained, and the stories were as savage and hilarious as you’d expect.

Howard Davies’ on-stage interviews in the evenings were characteristically charismatic; the idea to introduce a Graham Norton chair (for people to sit down on and tell stories with the jeopardy of being tipped off if it’s boring) genius. It’s best for all concerned that those tales stay in the room – you’ll just have to take it from me that there was plenty of toilet and adult humor involving champion rally drivers.

Maggie’s was a hive of activity until the early hours – talk of a 4am exit on Friday swirled, only to be superseded by Saturday’s 6am wind-down. It absolutely was one of those occasions where one day, those of us fortunate enough to make it will smile with pride and say: I was there.

And it was all thanks to one man: Donagh Kelly.

For him to pull off an event of this magnitude with such precision and class was a real credit to him and his team at the Stables. Almost as impressive as his rendition of Country Roads with a guitar in-hand.

“It’s been a great weekend,” Donagh reflected. “The laughs, the memories… it’s probably been beyond most of our expectations just how well the whole thing has come together. We’re truly blessed that we can do this, so we’re very, very lucky guys.

“Watching the guys come together over the last few days and, like you say, guys who haven’t seen each other for 25 years, they just pick it up where they left it off,” he added.

“I suppose when you watch the emotion of the guys as they come back together, as much as they were rivals, they’re all friends as well. It’s a really, really privileged position to be in to be able to do something like this.”

I’ll be honest, I felt the same just to be there. Rallying was never about Colin McRae or Richard Burns for me, rather Alister McRae and Mark Higgins. I’ve spoken and met most of the drivers of this period before, but regardless I spent the weekend feeling like an imposter. How could I possibly be a part of this?

But on reflection, I was completely missing the point. Re-listening to Ari Vatanen’s after-dinner speech made me realize.

“I haven’t known Donagh for long, but in fact I have known him since a very long time,” he began.

“In 1978 he was seven years old and he was standing at a crossroads with a church on the inside. I was coming in the black beauty Escort, braking late, locking the wheels, turning right, going sideways, leaving a black trace on the Tarmac, smoke coming up. He was looking at me like I was looking in 1964.

“It was two o’clock in the morning in the middle of July. In the middle of July we don’t have night, we have this fantastic summer light – first car comes, and I’d been there since 10 o’clock in the evening. The first car came, a white Volvo 544, sideways, drum brakes, hot, kicking up the dust – wow. That’s what happened to Donagh, exactly the same thing. And that’s what this weekend is all about.

“Nobody can tell us or you that we get goosebumps for the wrong reasons, because we each of us have unique lives, unique dreams. There are no two persons alike on the face of the earth, and this weekend is a weekend about passion. It’s a weekend about people who believe in their dreams, who believe in the beauty of their dreams. And that’s what makes life beautiful.”

To further enhance the point, as I was walking around the museum filming reactions to the cars as the doors were opened to the public, I saw a little boy with his mom, gripping her hand tight.

He was gravitating towards the ex-Laukkanen Golf, and I could see it in his eyes. This look of amazement, of fascination. But he wouldn’t let go of his mom’s hand. It was as if he was scared.

It was like I was looking at myself all those years ago.

And that’s what I personally will take from the BRC reunion. As Ari said, it was a weekend for people who believe in their dreams.

“But you need always somebody who puts it together, who starts it off, and that’s Donagh here,” Ari concluded.

“I thank you from all of us to be here, and thank you that I feel a part of this community where we all are equals, whether we are champion or not champion.

“That doesn’t matter, because we are passionate about something. That’s what matters.”