Top road rally navigator Graham Dance will swap ordinance survey maps for pace notes as he pairs up with
Sky Sports Tony Jardine to compete in his first ever national stage rally, the Rallye Sunseeker this weekend.
Dance, won the prestigious 2005 Lombard Endurance Rally alongside Jamie Turner, accepted the challenge made by the editor of
Motorsport News, Matt Burt, who will commission an article in order to contrast the differences in the two rally disciplines.
Although Dance has competed in over 70 road rallies since 2001 this will be his first experience of national stage rallying as he makes the transition from remote public tarmac tracks to forest stages.
For years it has been an ambition of mine to compete in the Rallye Sunseeker and try national stage rallying, he said. I have watched the event and marshalled on the event many times, in fact I can see some of the stages from where I live.
I just hope I can make the transition from road rallying which is a totally different branch of the sport. We compete on tiny public mountain roads, called whites, as that's how they appear on the detailed ordinance survey maps we navigate from in the middle of the night for anything up to 200 miles. It's very intense and I'm continually plotting a course, never lifting my head from the maps. The other big difference is that we drive standard cars whilst stage rally cars are generally highly prepared and tuned especially for the job.
Co-driver Dance will instead navigate Jardine from road to forest stage by a road book and learn to read the specially adapted pace notes which represent the forest tracks in abbreviated code allowing the team to go as fast as possible provided the timing of the calls are right.
Jardine, fresh from a successful trip to Sweden for a round of the World Rally Championship, where he finished 41st overall and second in class, has competed in the Rallye Sunseeker for the last 15 years.
