London Irish Take Rallycross to Heart BRC Pays Tribute to Nikki Stevens
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world • monde • welt • värld DIVISION ONE-A: LITTLE ONES UP TO SPEED Rallycross INFLUX OF DRIVERS HELPS #31 – July 2006 CLASS ACHIEVE POTENTIAL London Irish take Rallycross to heart BRC pays tribute to Nikki Stevens Jordan junks G- Tech Focus at Blyton world • monde • welt • värld 3 4 New motor club takes Rallycross cars and Nikki Stevens Rallycross drivers to launch party Live your life If there’s something you want to do in your life, her life – she was a high-flier in her working this month we heartily recommend you get out life and achieved a huge amount in her motor there and do everything in your power to fulfil sport activities; one of very few female licensed that goal. Life is short, this is not a rehearsal. Clerks of the Course in Britain, she had hit the 5 What brings this home to everyone glass ceiling in this particular avenue. involved in Rallycross in Britain and Ireland A laugh was never far away and, though never Division One-A is the untimely passing of Nikki Stevens late less than entirely professional, if you needed last month. Nikki was just 41-years-old, so reminding that this stuff should be fun, Nikki Small ones are more juicy would probably have considered that she was was your girl. something like halfway through life’s journey. The bottle of Chardonnay in the paddock We’d known her for something like 20 years office at Blyton last Sunday afternoon made a and, although it wasn’t always a bed of roses, poignant sight. we’re fairly sure that Nikki packed a lot into [email protected] Click it! Subscribe Copyright 8 9 Advertisements in Rallycross Rallycross World is published Rallycross World is a Myriorama French championship’s Division Three cars Morte Bermingrud to World are interactive – click on monthly and distributed production published by Tim them to jump straight to the exclusively by e-mail Whittington. match Division One for speed race a Citroën C4 in advertiser’s website. Subscriptions cost £12 per This publication may not And make sure you check year (12 issues) and can be be redistributed, copied or 2007 the whole advert as some made online or by post, click reproduced in whole or in have multiple links – and the link below for details. part in any form without you wouldn’t want to miss the written consent of the anything, would you. subscriptions • abonnement copyright holder. Unless There are also links from subskription • abonnera otherwise stated, all text and some editorial items and we photographs are © copyright will always try to offer a live Tim Whittington 2006. 10 Christopher Evans 14 link wherever we quote a Click Contributors: Eddi Laumanns, website address in editorial Jacques Privat, Jan Kåre Rafoss, Karl-Gunnar Lindkvist The Rallycross World content. Backmans Foto. 11 Rallycross World is also here This issue published July 6 poster – Kenneth Hansen featured at the recently Next issue published August 4 12 Kyle Orr launched website subskription • abonnera [email protected] at full flight in his C4 www.myriorama.com subscriptions • abonnement www.myriorama.com 13 Pat Doran/Andrew Jordan Briefing Enough already Next month’s FIA North European Zone Rallycross Championship event in Latvia is also a candidate event for the 2007 FIA European Rallycross Championship. Latvia is probably the strongest of the events in the NEZ calendar – the first two rounds of which have been cancelled – and the event at the Musa Sports Complex near Bauska should have little difficulty in mustering a respectable entry, even though it falls one week before the Belgian ERC round. What is less certain is whether the ERC can sustain a 12th event. The current championship regulations do not permit the ERC to comprise more than 12 rounds, but before the championship is brought up to its maximum permitted length, it would seem appropriate to properly assess the impact that this year’s addition of an 11th event will have. The upcoming Hungarian event at Nyirad on July 22/23 has effectively negated the ERC’s traditional summer break, a period in which teams were able to spend a few weeks regrouping and getting their breath back after the dash through the first half of the season, as well as gathering resources with which to tackle Cars at club launch the second half of the campaign. It is already a select few who can muster the time and finance to complete a full championship season. Stretching the season to 11 races will doubtless push a New London Irish Motor Club embraces Rallycross few more to the edge, adding a 12th may tip some over it. On the other hand, the inclusion of a Latvian race may well encourage more drivers from the greater Russia to drive in the Leading Rallycross drivers will be present work towards running its first special current WRC machinery and the there ERC. The evidence for this being the case is slim, however. The at the launch of the London Irish Motor stage event – in conjunction with an will also be autocross, Autograss and Portuguese event has been a fixture for many years and still Club on July 15. established club – in Wales next year. motorcycles among the show. there is no full time Portuguese participant in the championship. The new organisation has been The official launch of the club will There will be a series of forums And Hungarians are few and far between in the 2006 ERC. created following an idea first suggested take place at The Bell House Hotel in during the event which starts at 5pm, It’s good that those charged with planning the championship by London-based Irishman and recent Beaconsfield and includes a static display these planned to be split into Mature calendar are open to new events, but if they also want a Rallycross convert Ollie O’Donovan. of more than 30 rally and Rallycross cars, Rally Drivers, Young Rally Drivers and consistently strong championship they should start to consider The club has a rally focus but with an the latter to include Pat Doran’s 2005 Rallycross Drivers. Among the latter the financial implication for the teams taking part. In an era increasing number of Irish driver involved British championship winning Fiesta ST, group will be Martin Schanche, Dermot when manufacturer teams with multi-million-pound budgets and in, or expressing an interest in getting O’Donovan’s ex-Tracey/McCluskey/ Carnegie, John McCluskey, Christopher hundreds of full-time staff say it is not feasible to contest more involved in Rallycross, it too will feature Holfeld/Gollop Peugeot 306 Supercar and Evans and Mark Rennison. than 16 WRC events in a year, the prospect of a group of largely strongly. an ex-Martin Schanche RS200 now owned The event also includes a buffet semi-professional teams being expected to tackle 12 ERC rounds The London Irish MC will be an event by Glynn O’Dell. The rally cars scheduled and live band, for more details see in a 20-week season doesn’t appear to make sense. organising club and already has plans to to appear range from a Hillman Imp to londonirishmotorclub.com Rallycross World #31 – JULY 2006 | 3 Nikki Stevens THE UK’s No1 BRAND OF FIRE RESISTANT RACE SUITS www.awsracewear.com FOR BROCHURE OR SALES CALL 01233 638498 Nikki Stevens presenting Dermot Carnegie with an award in January 2005 MSA British Rallycross Championship aspects of the sport. end of Rallycross events by uncorking a coordinator and British Rallycross One of very few women to hold bottle or two, shared between members Drivers Association cimmittee member a Clerk of the Course licence (a of her organising team. She ran the Nikki Stevens died on June 22. She was qualification she’d achieved for both paddock office with great efficiency 41-years-old and had been admitted to racing and Rallycross), Stevens was also but was always ready for a laugh, once hospital two days earlier with what was a leading organiser, as well a company responding to Belgian racer Marcel diagnosed as a liver infection and septic director, within the SEMSEC organisation Beerden’s offer of marriage by asking shock. running events at Lydden and Brands him: “How much money have you got?” Although it was only in the last few Hatch. Stevens shared her lifelong passion for years that Stevens had joined the Never less than professional in motor sport with her brother, Andy, with BRDA’s committee and taken on senior anything she did, Stevens also had a whom she had just made the annual trip roles within the club and as the BRC great sense of humour and never lost to LeMans when she was taken ill. Our coordinator, her involvement with sight of the fact that motor sport was thoughts are with Nikki’s mother and Rallycross goes back at least 20 years fun. Within Rallycross she had instigated brother, her family and countless friends and she had experienced many different the Chardonnay Club and marked the in motor sport. Rallycross World #31 – JULY 2006 | 4 The A final in France was one of the finest motor races you could wish to see, the top five nose-to-tail all the way Top class sub-class In its fourth season Division One-A appears to have found its place within the FIA European Rallycross Championship. Swelled by a handful of new arrivals this year the category has, during the fi rst few rounds of the 2006 ERC, offered some of the very best racing. The action is served up by a good mix of cars and drivers from the widest gamut of countries and the class now appears attractive to an increasingly wide range of competitors.