To adapt a much-used football metaphor, the 2003 Manx International Rally was an event of three thirds - conveniently dividing into the three actual legs.
Leg 1 started in the square at Castletown (the Isle of Man's historic capital) at 4.00pm on Thursday evening. It consisted of three stages totalling 18 miles; a regroup at the famous TT Grandstand (also the location of Rally HQ and central service throughout the event); then three more stages, including two banzai runs around Castletown harbour - a further eight miles only.
Although the weather was atrocious, especially over the highest points where low cloud was a real problem, the field behaved itself fairly well, with the exception of Production class contender Roy White who put his GpN Evo7 off on the second stage, as did John Lloyd in his Impreza. Other incidents involved the unfortunate Kate and Paul Heath, whose Seat Ibiza lost a wheel whilst negotiating the harbour, and a wayward Group B Renault Turbo, which inexplicably wiped off all four corners on an unyielding stone wall whilst doing a supposedly gentle demonstration run.
Everyone knows that the Manx is probably the toughest of all the Pirelli British Championship events, and that 206 competitive miles over the Island's extremely demanding roads, with their jumps and fast, tricky bends demand a steady pace rather than an all-out max attack - but obviously this understanding didn't get through to all the crews.
Friday morning's Leg 2 dawned dry and sunny as the cars moved out of parc fermé at 9.00am, and the forecast was for more of the same, taking away the difficult tyre choices of the previous evening. By this time, reigning British Rally Champion Jonny Milner (driving his usual Team Dynamics Toyota Corolla WRC) had pulled out a nineteen second advantage over young Finn Jari-Matti Latvala's M-Sport Ford Focus WRC, fully recovered from his Jim Clark accident and buoyed up by a good result on the previous weekend's Rallye Deutschland. Ex-Irish champion Kenny McKinstry (S8 Subaru Impreza WRC) was in third, James Thompson (Ralliart Mitsubishi Lancer E6.5) fourth, and Tapio Laukkanen (Motorsport Leasing/Phil Morgan Subaru Impreza WRC) fifth. Gwyndaf Evans's MG ZR led Super 1600 from Kris Meeke's S-Mac Opel Corsa, and Seamus Leonard had taken charge of the Production class from Dick Curran. Things were shaping up for a memorable contest.
Over the first few Friday stages, the action was fast and furious, with Milner, Latvala and Laukanen separated by seconds. McKinstry, however, picked up two simultaneous punctures that cost him three minutes and dropped him down the order to 16th. This seemed a bad omen, because from then on all sorts of disasters started happening to all sorts of crews.
First to suffer were the S16s. Kris Meeke experienced terminal drive-shaft/differential failure and dropped out of second place, thereby robbing the event of an enticing duel between him and Gwyndaf. To make matters worse, Kris's mentor Colin McRae had just dropped in by helicopter to lend his support. Three stages later, it was the turn of the old master himself. Gwyndaf had been stuck in fourth gear, but his service crew changed the gearbox at Friday's first service, although not within the allotted 20 minutes time limit. The resulting three-minute penalty dropped Gwyndaf from seventh overall to 20th, but this proved academic as the replacement box packed up on stage 11. Steve Hill broke a drive-shaft after a particularly heavy landing, picking up a road penalty from which he never really recovered, eventually retiring on Saturday morning with low oil pressure. Leon Pesticcio had a clutch problem, caused by a leaking master cylinder pump that is unfortunately located within the gearbox on the rally version of the Punto. The Hi-Tec crew managed to fit a new gearbox, but he too dropped down the field, eventually collecting two and a half minutes of penalties which put him right out of the competition. Barry Clark also retired his Puma with undisclosed mechanical problems. Net result: only two (Champion and Jennings) out of seven running healthily in the class.
As if all this wasn't enough, with two-thirds of the event still to run, the front runners struck trouble as well. First, Paul Bird, driving Manfred Stohl's MSD Deutschland Hyundai Accent WRC3 and in a very impressive fifth place, had a monster roll, ending up on his roof and blocking the stage. Luckily he and co-driver Larry Carter were unhurt, but one can only imagine Paul's anguish, especially after receiving news of Steve Hislop's untimely death a few hours before. Then Dougie Hall repeated his Scottish roll, and current British Touring Car Champion James 'Tommo' Thompson rolled his Mitsuishi over a bank and into a 20-foot deep ditch, comprehensively ending any chance of Manx glory. A crane was duly despatched to get it out.
Just two stages later, news came through of yet another major accident. Jari-Matti Latvala, who had been really going for it in a bid to get in front of Milner, misjudged one of the many Manx corners and damaged the M-Sport Focus too badly to continue. Fortunately it wasn't nearly as severe as his Jim Clark accident which put co-driver Carl Williamson in hospital. Latvala is undoubtedly a star of the future – one has only to witness his total commitment to see that – but pacing himself will presumably be part of the learning curve.
