Motor Club have a Funky Time :: Wessex Scene Online

Motor Club have a Funky Time

24th May 2003
Elizabeth Pope

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Jan 03 - Wessex reflect on year to remember

On the last weekend of the Easter holidays, 26th/27th April, Southampton Uni’s Wessex Motor Club hosted the National Student Motorsport Championship (NSMSC).

The NSMSC comprises three parts: the autotest to challenge the drivers, the table top rally, a navigational exercise to fox the navigators, and the road rally, a joint all-night competition, which this year was the Funky Elephant Road Rally, co-promoted by Wessex & Basingstoke MCs.

Having trawled all the way to Scotland for last year’s event, our three crews, Olly Smith and David Coles, Andy Garrett and Susan Broughall, and Ed Butler and Calum Maciver, were hoping for some success on home territory.

In the months before the competition, we’d sent invitations to many universities, but after much interest, in the event, only a valiant three-crew team from Leeds University, and a half crew from Oxford Brookes turned out for the fun.

However, Wessex MC aren’t known for running from the competition, and despite the limited field, come Saturday morning it was still all systems go. But we didn’t bank on the great British weather making things hard for us.

The grass autotest site was inspected on the Friday and the Saturday, but the recent rain had unfortunately left it far too boggy to risk abusing cars on. So onto plan B. Well there wasn’t a plan B, so some quick thinking generated the brainwave that the drivers could do a karting challenge, but this time the great British public was against us, having chosen to swamp all local karting circuits on the one weekend we urgently needed a slot.

In the end, the table top ran with full crews (i.e. driver and navigator instead of the navigator alone) tackling the clues, and this proved a success. The result boded well for the home crews. The less-experienced visitors struggled with the navigation, leaving the home crews finishing this discipline in a comfortable 1-2-3.

And so onto the Funky Elephant Road Rally. The event it self proved to be a great success, running on fun, demanding roads, without a spot of rain, and recording no retirements. Once again, Southampton showed the competition who was in charge by convincingly beating them, taking the overall and individual NSMSC awards.

The Funky Elephant was also a round of the regional ACSMC “Rally 2003” Road Rally Championship, and Wessex MC crews fared especially well, filling 5 of the top 10 spots, and taking 2 class wins. Although Southampton comprehensively beat the opposition, we were very grateful to them for making the effort to come, and we believe they enjoyed it despite losing out.

Let’s hope next year sees greater attendance, and then Southampton can put a few more universities in their places! http://www.wessexmotorclub.co.uk