DEBIT POINTS ACRUED BY THE TOP TEN DRIVERS TELLS HOW COMPETITIVE THE EVENT WAS
The SLARDAR 1000 4x4 Rally 2007 was a good step forward towards uplifting the event, especially in times of vehicle advancements that have rendered traditional rallying less challenging.
The 4X4 enthusiast may argue that the route did not sufficiently challenge their abilities. In the same stride, the typical rally driver could argue the route to be too slow. In fact the route was preposterously slow in some sections, where the average speeds to maintain were at 30 kmph on perfectly normal and wide tarmac roads and to add to the boredom the speed changes down to 20kmph and then back and forth at this snails pace with absolutely no check points even to test the discipline of TSD driving. “A bit of a bore old chap,” is what I can say to the plotters. The only challenge in this part of the fourth stage was to keep ahead of the bicycles overtaking when doing 20k’s and overtaking them again when doing 30k’s – wow that was a thrill – for the cyclists for sure.
This painfully slow pace went on through the entirety of the 2nd section of stage 4 from the 3rd km to the 84th and thereafter the last 4 km at a break neck average speed of 60kmph considering having to wade through the Digana traffic and speeding on coming buses. What is baffling is if the low speeds were to adopt road safety and if so what went wrong in the last 4km to ditch such intentions and demand a 60k average.
The only enjoyable aspect of this was doing 20 up Riverston valley which gave drivers the enjoyment of a scenic drive.
Also km 43 to 74 in the 1st section of stage 4 was above the speed limit – clocking between 62 and 65. So officially the rally exceeded the legal speed limits on public roads.
Another aspect of the event format this year that was not in keeping with the spirit of rallying was the river crossing. Rallying is first and foremost a race against the clock, where the rally crew are challenged to maintain a challenging pace. Be it a pace set by the plotters of a TSD rally or that set by the fastest driver in a FIA Standard Speed Rally, it is still a race against the clock. Rallying is not about establishing positions between drivers during the stages of the rally. It is always about establishing a points system where during each run, drivers accumulate points and the total at the end determining the winner.
In this year;s SLARDAR 1000, the Special Stage River Crossing was more a race within the race and conducted in a highly ridiculous manner not to say the least. Firstly, it was a timed stage and competitors ranked into positions. The ridiculous part is for debit points to be awarded according to rank position. In rallying each debit point carries a specific value such as one debit for each minute late. Therefore someone 10 minutes late gets only 10 debits. By giving debits according to ranking the person coming in at the 35th position would get 35 debits. Considering that the winner of this year’s SLARDAR 1000 got only 41 debits, one can see how meaningless this Special Stage points system was.
What one could have done was award a debit for each second that is later than the race leader so that the balance is maintained. For instance ten drivers timing between 38.11 and 38.95 seconds against a fastest timing of 31.47 would all receive 7 debits each, as opposed to there being a gap of 10 debits between the fastest and slowest amongst these ten drivers. This is what rallying is about. This was not a circuit race by any means.
Next we come to the unfair part of the Special Stage. Competitors in speed events timed to the second are always given a familiarisation of the track. Never has one been called upon in Rallying to drive cold on a terrain. Even in TSD, the cautions are given in the instructions. Drivers were not even allowed inspect the crossing, let alone to see other vehicles going across. A best of two runs could have easily made this more challenging. If time was a constraint for two runs, this part of the rally could have taken place at 3 minute intervals between vehicles. End of the day, those 4X4 Enthusiasts who have done this river crossing earlier, could have reversed across faster than those who were totally unfamiliar and thus cautious of avoiding wrecking their vehicles. This therefore was truly an unfair advantage.
The dune drive was certainly a challenge especially with the sand storm that even messed up the route for the first four vehicles. Withering the sand storm along the 6km long beach stretch was an experience by itself.
The 4x4 water crossings were a thrilling inclusion for sure and were within the limitations of rally prepared vehicles, especially where the route drove through a paddy field before entering the submerged causeway.
The drive through knuckles and exiting at Corbett’s Gap was rather pleasant and the weather during this stage was wonderful.
All things considered the rally was a bit too slow, which took away the spunk from the overall competition. Overall debits have been low in this rally mainly due to the inadequacy of checkpoints and the long main road sections at slow speeds that left ample room to recover delays accrued from the tough sections. The top ten positions all accrued under 100 debits with 10th place getting only 98 debit points.
Considering the lapse of 5 years, this year’s SLARDAR 1000 is a very good effort of reviving the event. Hats off to the organisers. However, in the historical spirit of this event, the average speeds need to be reconsidered and the main road sections reduced by about half.
One question that baffled many competitors was, why some of the 4X4 club entrants drove way above the required average speed, even overtaking the competitor driving 2 minutes ahead them, and thereafter seen parked on the road side about half a km before a check point? Was this a part of the battle for supremacy between the two clubs? Many of the 4x4 club mates were seen doing this. Beats me how this boils down to being a strategy, when considering that the checkpoint locations are unknown.
