DirtFish’s David Evans reaches the end of his is co-driving adventure at the Network Q Chester Rally Revival…
Made it. And made it in some style. Now I’m safely in the finish, I can definitely say today has been one of the most privileged days in my career. Co-driving Ian Gwynne on the inaugural Network Q Chester Rally Revival has been sensational.
The list of co-drivers in that particular Subaru Legacy RS now reads: Derek Ringer, Bruno Berglund, Ilkka Kivimaki and David Evans. Or three co-drivers and one bloke who sat in the same seat.
I’m happy to say the afternoon – and the final two stages – were far, far more straightforward than the morning. Ian didn’t need to use reverse once. And I remembered to plug my intercom thingy into the helmet. And I managed to make a sneaky video of us at Oulton Park.
By the way, on the subject of Oulton, Mr Palmer, those wheel tracks across the grass, yes those (the ones that would involve a pukka Group A Nineties beast and a committed driver), they were 100 per cent definitely nothing to do with us.
We wouldn’t have done that like we wouldn’t have lengthened our run at the stage with an extra lap…
I’ll offer a fuller version of the whole day, the whole experience in the next couple of days, but for now I’m just mighty glad we made it without any major map-reading issues and broadly speaking on time.
Running on the road behind Nicky Grist and Matt Edwards in Nick’s Celica Turbo 4WD and Jimmy McRae and Pauline Gullick in that fearsome V8 Firenza was a whole lot of fun and an absolute honor.
Big thanks have to go to the event organizers, all the marshals and the lovely Steve Rimmer for loaning us his epic Legacy. But my thanks are all saved for Ian.
He was superb. He didn’t make a single mistake all day and drove like an absolute hero. Rarely has a near-30-year-old car been backed into as many corners as ours was today.
His car control was immense, his finesse undimmed from his dominant days as the undoubted master of the Loctite Silverstone Rallysprint Championship.
And, what’s more, we stepped from what has to be the world’s most famous Legacy having won the cup (the pictures don’t lie).
For those of you wondering where we finished? We won. Because everybody won today. No scores were kept, no times were taken on this touring event. But I doubt very much anybody smiled more than Ian and I once he’d got the Subaru on song.
The story so far…
Chester Revival blog part one: Getting there
Chester Revival blog part two: Mapping progress
