Durham Auto Club

14/11/2024

We'd just like to say thank you to everyone who came along this year to support our club events including our Classics @ The Castle show at Raby Castle, Park and Gardens and also our Wearside Targa rally at Nissan in Sunderland.

Your support for these events has allowed Durham Auto Club to make another donation to Great North Air Ambulance Service. 👏

02/11/2024

Good luck to Stephen and Michael, and Steve and John who are competing on tomorrow’s The Malton Forest Rally

Thank you to our club members who are marshalling too.

02/11/2024

Time for a quick drive shaft change!

02/11/2024

Good luck to David Macintyre and Andy Brown in the C2R2 Max on the Kingdom Stages.

28/10/2024

Well done to Alan and Paul Hawdon who had a clean run on Sunday on Wigton's Solway Targa Rally over in Cumbria. They came away with 3rd in class, 8th Historic and 16th overall. 👏

📸 Courtesy of Alan!

20/10/2024

Christmas Stages at Croft.

Regulations are available now.

19/10/2024

Good luck to Stephen Petch and Michael Wilkinson car 11 on today’s Snowman Rally in Inverness.

📸Stephen Petch

12/10/2024

Good luck to our club members Paul Swift, Richard Pinkney and Cameron Pinkney representing England in the Ken Wharton Autotest today.

📸 is a screenshot from the live footage from Paul!

10/10/2024

Good luck to car 120 Dave McIntyre and Andy Brown on this weekend’s Mull Rally. They’re competing in the Citroen C2R2.

Thank you to our club members who have made the mammoth journey to marshal too! (Hope you’ve remembered your thermals.)

📸 to follow

09/10/2024

Last weekend Cramlington & DMC organised one of their Auto-Cross events up in a field just outside Ponteland so I thought I'd take the Pug and have a go at something a bit different for a change. Lots of fun and some wacky looking machines out too!

It's fairly accessible as a sport and you can run a standard car if you want. I had to run in class 6 as I don't have a full roll cage but the advantage of running in class 6 means that you get staggered starts so avoid potential contact in that first crucial bend! 🤣

If you haven't done it before I'd recommend having a go, I think CDMC plan to run another event in November this year. You will need a helmet, gloves, overalls and a handheld fire extinguisher though.

Result? Finished 2nd in class, I think I peaked too early in practice with the third fastest time from what I could see. Did qualify ninth for the finals but as I don't have a full cage I decided not to run in the final but I'd had my fun by then anyway. 😎

📸 North East Motor Sport Photography 👍

06/10/2024

My Alto’s 55th event. Autosolo at Kirkbride Airfield.

27/09/2024

Good luck to Stephen and Michael car 7 in this werekend’s Trackrod Rally Yorkshire

And to Steve and John car 20 in the Trackrod Rally.

Thank you to our club members who are out marshalling this weekend. Events would be impossible without dedicated volunteers.

Have a great weekend.

📸Stephen Petch

22/09/2024

Good luck to everyone taking part in the Doonhaner today.

13/09/2024

Motorsport UK recognises outstanding achievement in motor sport and endeavours to award honour the best of British with a range of awards and events.

07/09/2024

REGS AVAILABLE & ENTRIES OPEN🏁

We are delighted to be welcoming back A M Phillip Trucktech Ltd as our main sponsor for The Snowman Rally 2024. Preparations are well underway for this year’s event, which will run on Saturday 19 October and be based around the Black Isle Showground in Muir of Ord.

Entries are open as of 6pm tonight, and regulations and entry forms can be found on our website: https://www.snowmanrally.co.uk/online-entry

05/09/2024

Need your next Targa fix after The Wearside last weekend? - South of Scotland Car Club are running the Doonhamer in less than three weeks. 👇

𝑫𝒐𝒐𝒏𝒉𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒓 𝑪𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒄 𝑻𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒂 𝑹𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚

Still plenty of entries available for the McLean Doonhamer Targa in a few weeks time, with the favourite stages back.

We are also on the hunt for Marshals if anybody is available, please get in contact with the committee.

We have a bonus prize this year - all competitors & marshal’s will be entered into a draw

Sponser -

𝙀𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙗𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙠, 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙤𝙛 𝙎𝙘𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙖𝙧 𝙘𝙡𝙪𝙗 (𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙚𝙨 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙪𝙨)

https://autotest.sapphire-solutions.co.uk/livesites.php

04/09/2024

Well now that the dust has settled from last weekends Wearside Targa at Nissan Sunderland here's a bit of a debrief from the Clerk of the Course for the event:

First of all I'd like to say a big thank you to the marshals and test commanders who gave up their time to come along and help out on the event because without you this just wouldn't be possible. 👏

I'd also like to thank everyone who helped me with the organising, setting up and running of the event especially Colin Fish who gave up his bank holiday to help me sort 960 test diagrams, 350 time cards and 280 meal tickets.😵‍💫

Well done Ali Proctor and Adam Burkhill - 1st overall this year and another new name added to the trophy. 🥳

This was my first time as Clerk of the Course and in fact it’s my first time being involved with organising an event at all. As most of you know I have competed quite a bit and marshalled when I’ve been able to find time. I know that it wasn't perfect but I already have some ideas for improvements if Nissan will allow us to play again next year. 🤞

The Tests:

So were the tests too challenging? I'd originally planned to run 18 different tests but ended up trimming that idea back when someone pointed out that there were some newbies taking part. I did try to keep the tests flowing and open to allow the 'hooligans' to use more than first gear but had to also keep the average speeds below the 30mph max. One problem that I had was not being able to access the test site to design and measure the tests so it was all done using Google Maps! 🤔

Test Max times:

When I set the test max times I wanted to pitch them so that if you did get a wrong test it didn’t end your day with a massive time penalty that you could never claw back BUT this also meant that some crews benefitted a little if they took more time to do the test than the MAX. Difficult to find the right balance here! 🤔

Results: 🫣

We should have got some result out for competitors to check earlier in the day so sorry about that! Note to self "DISABLE WINDOWS UPDATES" - Just as we put provisional results out, the laptop decided to download and install a windows update which meant we couldn't do any checks or changes for best part of an hour. 🥵🙉

Wrong Tests:

Yes there were quite a few and we did have some queries as Bill Gates disabled the laptop! Some were correctly queried and we amended those so apologies about that, it was down to human error and we're all human. But some were upheld as the marshals had recorded incorrect tests so we have to accept that they are the judges of fact.

I do have some ideas to improve the WT analysis and recording procedure for next year so things can only get better.

Thanks everyone for coming along and competing. It was always one of my favourite events so I'm glad we've been able to ressurect it.

I hope you all enjoyed it and would like to come back and do it again. If you have any suggestions please drop me an email and I'll add them to the debrief list! ([email protected])

Simon Jennings.
Clerk of the Course

04/09/2024

Another evening and another navigation event.

Setting crews off on an exploration of County Durham.





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