'E. & S.' RALLY WILL CHANGE PATTERN FOR HAT-TRICK BID
By Ross Giles - our motoring correspondent
ORGANISERS of the "Express and Star" car rally, the Wolverhampton Car Club, are making a bid this year for their third "rally of the year" award for the event by changing its pattern but, they hope, maintaining its severity.
Covering the night of March 13-14 this 200 mile event qualifys for the R.A.C. British rally championship, the British Drivers' Association's gold star and women's silver garter award as well as the "Motoring News" rally championship.
Because it is now, after many years; again possible to use North Wales as a rally area, the organisers have had to take the start to Colwyn Bay for two reasons.
One has been to find the necessary pre-rally accommodation for about 150 cars without disrupting local traffic, and the other, to reduce the main road "run-in" to the first control to the minimum possible mileage.
NO DAYLIGHT RALLYING
The rally will finish at Llandrindod Wells before dawn on the Sunday morning and there will be no, daylight rallying.
Of changes in the design of the rally the organisers say: "The trend in English-Welsh rallying is changing, we think for the better, and the "Express and Star" event will play a major part in this transformation."
The major difference this year, they add, will be the rejection of the old "high pressure continuous thrash" that is the main reason for so much anti-rally feeling.
Instead this will be a new specialised type of event where the real competition takes place on particularly interesting, but almost entirely unpopulated sections which will be timed to the second.
These sections will be anything between two and 25 miles long and linked-by easier sections in which competitors will be allowed to make up time. These linking sections, however, will be as short as possible.
In the general classification there will be £206 in prize money, ranging from £60 for first place down to £4 for 13th, 14th and 15th places. A further £36 is reserved for first and seconds class and team awards.