Flashback: Toyota’s farmhouse service stop on RAC Rally

Attention at this time of year three decades ago would turn to following the RAC Rally around the classic special stages in Britain’s forests. The problem would always be avoiding spectator traffic and becoming trapped in some narrow road while the rally sped into Scotland, through the Yorkshire Dales or across the Brecon Beacons.

The answer would be to travel with seasoned rally journalists who knew the trick routes into the best vantage points. In 1993, I accompanied Mike Greasley, former editor of Rallycourse. Mike could not only read special stage maps, but he was also on good terms with the teams, specifically Toyota and their top man, Ove Andersson. This was in the days when world championship rallying really went places rather than doing a loop and returning to a sanitised service park before rinsing and repeating the same stages.

Servicing was on the hoof and Mike had sight of Toyota’s service plan. It took us to this farmyard on a remote road leading to Kershope and the start of brutal stages in Kielder Forest. Here we see the Celica Turbo 4WDs of Didier Auriol, left, and Mats Jonsson. (Juha Kankkunen has just departed, on his way – as it would turn out – to a victory helped by Colin McRae holing a radiator on his Subaru Impreza in Kershope.) Apart from the Toyota crew, there was no one else around; the perfect opportunity to savour the atmosphere on this fresh Tuesday morning and hear about Toyota’s progress through the previous stages in the Lake District.

Mike introduced me to Andersson, who used the opportunity to explain why Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Subaru had formed the World Rally Teams Association as a means of expressing collective displeasure over the state of international rallying. It was their view that the FIA saw rallying as a threat to Formula 1. Andersson recalled how several broadcasters had been restricted and treated so badly in Monte Carlo that they went home before the rally had started. “Rallying is being screwed by the FIA” was how he finished his calm but forcefully articulated piece. And there was me thinking Tuesday would be a quiet day on the RAC with little to report to my newspaper.

It made quite a story, which also included Andersson’s view that central servicing was essential if media coverage was to be improved. I could see his point. But I also felt sadness over the impending loss of scenes such as this which represented the heart and soul of rallying at every level.