After a good result for our first rally together last August, Tom Brooks and I teamed up again for the Bath Festival in his MR2. After DNFs on the Bath Festival in 2024 (with Gavin, in Fly) and in 2025 (with Anthony Newton, in his BMW), I really didn’t want to make it a hat-trick…!

Tom had put a lot of pre-event work into the car, as on his last event at Debden in November he had blown the engine. The replacement is a standard second hand engine (like for like as it was before), and he’d also made some improvements to the car including a new sump guard and some secondhand harnesses (bought from Anthony!). I’d worked on a few things myself, but ultimately we both wanted to get a finish and had a view that what would be would be. We were seeded at Car 6.

The first couple of tests were around Castle Combe, the first being around the perimeter track with the rally school and the second being on the circuit. We had a good run here, and were sitting 3rd overall, cheered on by both Tom’s Dad and his oldest son. We, along with many other crews, beat the bogey on Test 2; we can now see we were joint fastest on that test along with John Davies and Nick Bloxham, but having beaten the bogey, it didn’t count. Tom doesn’t want to know results during the day and this has rubbed off on me so I try to check times but ignore positions.

From Combe, we headed to a 0.60 mile test on a farm track, which was a little not as map. It took just over 90 seconds, which saw us 8th quickest, but there were just seconds in it. We then headed to a venue I remembered from years ago, by Keevil Airfield, which was very slippery. It was a mud bath and we were fourth quickest; unsurprisingly the Subaru was way ahead of everyone! Back to the short farm test, where we went one second quicker (one of those odd ones where we thought it would be more!) before we headed north for our first time at Charlton Park.

Around Charlton Park, we were fourth quickest, dropping a few seconds to both John and Nick and the Subaru. The test had been amended slightly to avoid a big flood, but there was still plenty of water, some of which ended up in the car! With many passage checks I find it easier to leave the window down and just deal with the consequences (and protect the map and timecard!). We then headed back to Combe for Test 7, which was a repeat of Test 1. We were joint second fastest here, five seconds off the Subaru. It was then time for a 40 minute lunch break where we checked tyres, and a couple of things on the car and had a bite to eat. Tom had decided we were running knobblies all day, rather than changing for different tests, and this was working well.

Test 8 was a repeat of Test 2 and this time we were the only crew to beat the bogey, being three seconds under – but you cannot get a time quicker than the bogey, so those extra few seconds didn’t count. We were the quickest crew on this test, being five seconds quicker than the next closest once we were given the bogey time. We then headed to Kemble for the first time that day, where we had two tests. They were the same, with Test 9 starting and finishing in the left lane and Test 10 starting and finishing on the right. Tom won the Kemble Targa last year (a single venue event) and we were quickest on Test 9 by four seconds which was pleasing.

We were going well on Test 10 (Kemble 2) until just before the split where we caught the car who had started 30 seconds in front of us. Unfortunately, we followed them through the split and the passage check; there was nothing we could do other than sit and wait whilst they had their timecard signed, and we watched a few seconds tick away (there was nothing we nor the marshals could do other than await our turn). We went three seconds slower than our first run, which we would have hoped to have improved on. We were joint quickest on this test and it is part of rallying, but as I said to Tom at the time, I hoped those few seconds wouldn’t be costly later…

We headed off to Test 11, which was Charlton Park and a repeat of the earliest test. We were second quickest here (the Subaru was three seconds faster), and we had found 19 seconds from our first run, which was pleasing. We didn’t know it at the time, but as we headed off to Castle Combe, we were sitting joint 2nd overall, 25 seconds behind John and Nick in the Puma.

Test 12 was the earlier two Combe tests joined up, but with the loop taken out of the rally school. We changed the right rear tyre for our spare before the start as it was looking a little ropey, and we were good to go. The MR2 is a well built, and well pedalled, car but this for me was our test of the day and it will stay with me for a good while yet. We were both on it, and I don’t know what more we really could have given. We were catching another car and stopped alongside them at our final stop/go, and just managed to get in front of them before next slalom. The effort showed in the final times; 19 seconds quicker than anybody else. Tom’s Dad messaged me and said “just seen the time on the last test, what were you two doing?” and my reply was simple; “Teamwork .”

We finished the event 2nd overall – our second rally together, and our second 2nd overall. We would have taken that before the event if you had asked us, but that last test really helped us as we ended up finishing just one second off the overall win. So close, but…! Sometimes in rallying you need the speed and a little luck; we had the pace but a little more sprinkling of luck would have helped, but we finished. Best of all, we spent a LOT of the day laughing whilst driving around the countryside and enjoying the tests and snacking on minstrels. Oh, and I beat Gavin – the first time we’ve both navigated on the same event, he and Anthony had a great run to 7th overall, Anthony’s first targa in the Fiesta.

A good day’s rallying in the best coloured car (red!), having a lot of laughs with a great mate – can’t ask for much more really.

Photos: M&H Photography and my own

We’ve seen many events we’ve entered sadly end up cancelled in 2025, more than either of us have experienced in recent years, and with the DDMC November 12 Car being cancelled we were looking forward to the December event and had asked for our entry to be carried over. In November, a storm and heavy local flooding saw the event we’d entered (understandably!) cancelled, which was a shame as it had a full entry and reserves. Whilst there wasn’t quite a full entry for the December event, it was still well supported.

The event started out of Leigh Delamere services, so I hoped it may use some lanes I knew from my childhood having moved to Wiltshire age 7. We had entered with me driving and Gavin navigating for this reason, although we thought some lanes may now also be familiar from running the Cotswold Historic. We thought the first section would see us turn left out of the services but we went right, with an interesting section around Kington St Michael. It was all plot and bash with the first handout taking us to two controls, and telling us we would use a white as well as a byway open to all traffic.

The handout was a combination of spot heights, things to pass over, green dots and a couple of grid references for triangles, where we expected to find code boards. The byway was interesting as it wasn’t one either of us knew, and didn’t go until recently (I’ve parked at the end of it before!). We dropped 1 minute in the first section (3 miles, just missing our time by a few seconds), and then 5 minutes in the second (8 miles); Gavin had forgotten to tell me about a long way round triangle, so we went back incase there was a board, only to find there wasn’t! TC3 was about a mile on from where I’d moved to age 7 as we passed the cottage where I lived, so I did know a little of the route.

From here, the sections got longer. TC3 to TC4 was 15 miles, and again some lanes were familiar, with the navigation being crossing grid lines. The northing and easting grid lines were very similar numbers which kept Gavin busy, and he told me the control was in a lay-by; I could think of two it could be as we were now within 2/3 miles of where my parents currently live, and we found it ok without dropping any time. The next section was the longest of the night at 20 miles, with the navigation being the direction (north, south, east or west) to leave grid squares. This section took us around the other side of my parents’ village and then into some unfamiliar roads, although the beginning was tricky with a lot of junctions for Gavin to work out. We did ok on this section too dropping no time.

The final section was 18.5 miles and was a mixture of grid references (for triangles), things touching the road on the map, e.g. spot heights, mile stones, churches, and a few unders and overs for bridges and electricity lines. This brought us back to south of Chippenham, and we had another good section with no time dropped.

.We’d managed to fill in all the boxes for code boards so hoped we had done ok, but you never quite know! It turned out we had found all the boards so had no fails and had dropped 6 minutes, leaving us 1st in class and 3rd overall. The winners had only dropped 1 minute with the second place crew dropping four minutes, so it was a close and an enjoyable night. We thought this was our penultimate event of 2025 as we’d tried to enter an autotest the next day, but with no acknowledgement of our entry, no finals, no entry list published anywhere and no idea if the event was running, the 12 Car ended up being our last event for 2025, which was a good way to end.