At the moment it’s easy to think that British rallying is struggling. But actually, we’re in a better position than we’ve been for a long time. Allow me to explain and introduce you to a couple of friends of mine…

The British Rally Championship has been taken in-house and is due to re-launch in 2016 (presumably with renewed investment), and the BTRDA Rally Championship, the UK’s premier gravel title went down to the final round for the third year in a row.

Add to that the fact that in 2015 the BTRDA will bring together the gravel and asphalt championships to create a mixed surface challenge, and you start to see a different picture.

One of the most exciting things to have happened for British rallying in the last few years has been the introduction of Junior rallying, with budding stars able to get out and compete from the age of 14.

I’ve been involved from the start, both competing in the F1000 Championship, and covering the Junior 1000 that came from it for the Special Stage TV Show.

As a result, I’ve been privileged to meet and follow the progress of some of the competitors as they’ve progressed from the Juniors through to their various chosen next steps.

One such driver is Chris Ingram, a man who I sat with in his Junior 1000 Citroen C1 for a feature on Special Stage, and who in 2015 will contest his first season as a works driver with Peugeot. Chris’ success is surely the biggest inspiration our current young crop of drivers could ever be given, because he has achieved his first works drive.

Another man we hear a lot about is Aaron McClure, who having started in the same series as Ingram is stepping up from the British Rally Championship to four wheel drive in 2015 to contest the Group N class in the BTRDA Series. With people like Luke Francis and David Wright proving that a Group N car can fight for podiums with the top teams and drivers, McClure faces his biggest challenge, and opportunity yet.

Aaron’s story, like Ingram’s should inspire anyone whose dream it is to climb the ranks of UK rallying.

I’m delighted to be bringing you an up-close, honest and frank Q&A with both of these drivers on this site, going under the surface to bring you a fascinating insight into their respective rally career routes. They’ll be offering real-world advice to budding young drivers, and giving their views on some of the things that matter the most to fans, competitors and people involved with the world of rallying.

Look out for the Q&As hitting the site soon, including exclusive content from the Special Stage TV series, but in the meantime you can follow Chris and Aaron on Twitter where you can see their progress first-hand.

If you’re involved in motorsport in any way, you’ll be aware of how big an industry it is, particularly in the UK where we have some of the world’s leading innovators hailing from a variety of race and rally backgrounds.

You know those hybrid cars some of you drive that link seamlessly between power sources, or the energy recovery boost systems that are finding their way into mainstream motor cars nowadays? Well you can, in a very large part thank the motorsport industry for those, and countless other improvements and technologies that many of us take for granted.

Unfortunately, you may also be aware of a growing number of cases where the UK motorsport industry has been threatened by people who have moved into property near a race track or rally stage, only to complain about the noise.

These complaints have often resulted in curfews, bans and other restrictions on some of the country’s leading motorsport venues.

This, at best has made it very difficult for them to continue as a business, and at worst resulted in the loss of activity altogether; affecting jobs, innovation and an industry that we should all be proud of – motorsport fan or not.

Finally though, the British government has realised how ridiculous this situation is, and before someone realises a precedent has been set, moves in next to Heathrow and the courts are forced to give British Airways an ASBO, and has made the first move in putting a stop to this wilful destruction of industry, and fun.

The Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has released an e-petition designed to protect the UK motorsport industry from these jackals, who tear at the flesh of the soft underbelly of our fair sport (guess the petrolhead film quote!). 

And that’s where you, and I come in. We need to get involved and put our name to this and show the move some support.

You can read more about the e-petition on the Britcar website, and you can / should / will [delete as appropriate] sign the petition here.

Together with the move to allow more road closures for motorsport, this is a sign that finally motor racing and rallying are receiving just a little bit of the respect and appreciation they deserve. For this, we should all be thankful. The fight isn’t over yet, but clearly this is a victory for common sense, and for UK motorsport.   

(P.S. If you’re into gardening and found my website by mistake, please sign the petition anyway – thanks for your support!)

Well what a year 2014 was – WRC, supercars, radio shows, new additions to the family…looking back it’s been hectic but every moment was priceless and if I could do it all over again I would.

Thanks to all those of you who were a part of the rallies, the shoots or simply left messages on my Youtube videos to say you enjoyed watching them. You were all a part of a brilliant vintage!

Who knows what 2015 will bring, other than 365 days. I’d like to wish you happiness, health and success as you fill each and every one of them with things that make you ‘you’.

Looking forward to seeing you on the rally stages, in the studio or on air in 2015 – cheers!

Woody 

Ten years ago, if someone in a bad-handling, French-engined American gullwing sports car had wound his window down and told me that in 2014 I’d have presented some of the UK’s most watched rally TV shows, the UK round of the World Rally Championship and witnessed from the frontline one of the most dramatic finales British rallying has ever seen, I’d have been pretty excited.

So, I am – as you’d expect – pretty excited to have had the year I have, which has included all those things. I feel that I’m part of one of the best teams rallying has ever seen as a presenter on Special Stage. And I believe that when you have talented, motivated people who live and breathe the work they do, bigger things are always possible.

Here’s a look at the Special Stage Team’s year in numbers…
7 Championships covered
21 Team Members
55 TV Shows
70 Events
1760 Hours of Editing
2448 Minutes of Coverage
161,500 Words of Scripts…
191,000 Miles travelled by the team

Big numbers from a big year. And with plans due to be announced for not only more of the same in 2015, but also other exciting #RallyTV projects I’m more excited than ever to be part of this winning team.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the whole Production Team, of course headed up by Producer Wayne Goldring who since working on the Special Stage pilot all those years ago has become a good friend, and an inspiring person to work with.

To all the competitors, organisers, teams and fans that have made our achievements so far at Special Stage possible, thank you – have a great Christmas, but don’t take too much time off. After all, we’ve all got an even bigger job to do from 2015 onwards to ensure UK rallying steps up yet another gear.

Paul

Hosting the 2014 BTRDA Rally Awards

We all dread that time of the year when our car insurance is up for renewal, don’t we. Trawling round looking for the lesser of two hundred evils, with only a dent in your bank balance and a cuddly zoo animal to show for your troubles. As a motorist, I feel persecuted in a number of ways, but car insurance comes high up on the list.

I have never been able to think of a way of writing about road car insurance on my motoring blog without being negative. And so I never have. That’s why, when an online media agency called Steak got in touch to let me know about a new game they’ve created for insurance company 1st Central, I wanted to share it with you.

Taxi drivers beware!

Why? Because they’ve done some research about driving habits in the UK that makes for pretty grim reading. And rather than rub their hands together (in the knowledge that it’s largely bad driving habits that cause higher insurance premiums), they’ve decided to devise a fun way to tell us about them, in the hope that we’ll all shape up a bit.

If at this point you’re burying your head in the sands of righteousness and holding yourself up as a pillar of the road community, I urge you to check out the results of 1st Central’s research. If you can honestly say that not one of the statistics relates to you in any way, shape or form, you have my personal approval to leave your head where it is. If not – read on…

Even where the insurance industry has tried to educate us in the things we need to do to keep ourselves safe – and our premiums down – this has been by way of preaching. So guess what – it hasn’t worked. And that’s where this ‘Road Rule-ette’ game comes in. The messages are all there, but they’re delivered in a simple, fun, and at times eye-opening way.

Mounting footpaths: Bad

The statistics are delivered in a series of ‘true or false’ trivia questions, across a range of road scenarios which somehow remind me of doing Pass Plus. And just like when I was doing Pass Plus, my minor indiscretion on the game came during the country road driving scenario. But this time, rather than being grumbled at by my instructor for blipping the throttle on down-shifts (he’d clearly never heard of heal-and-toe), my excuse is that I got distracted taking a screenshot and ran out of time to answer one of the questions.

Seriously though, even if you’re cynical about these sorts of things, as I often am – give it a go. There are things that will help you (busted myths about white lines on the road after speed cameras for instance), things you should know (is it legal to drink water behind the wheel?), and things that will I’m sure surprise you. For example, have you ever sounded your horn while stationary? Ouch!

More satisfying than Pass Plus?

Will the game cause a serious upturn in behaviour among those who consistently flout the laws? Probably not. But will it make the rest of us – most of whom have been guilty at some point of a minor motoring offence or two – think twice before checking our phones at the traffic lights or doing 10% over the speed limit without a care in the world?

You know, it just might. And if playing a two minute game in your lunch hour saves you a few quid, and more importantly a few points on your licence, then why not?

The only criticism I do have, is that the car appears to be a gruesome blend of Mk5 Golf and Fiat Punto. And for that reason, I simply cannot relate. Please 1st Central, give us a garage of exotic motors to choose from next time…

A lot is made of owning an Alfa Romeo. After all, Jeremy Clarkson once said you’re not a true petrolhead until you’ve owned one. Having owned and driven some of the best cars in the world, here’s why I think you owe it to yourself to stare at your reflection in ‘that’ badge.

Having owned everything from Mk2 Escorts to SEAT Leon FRs, and having driven everything from McLarens and Lamborghinis to Group B rally cars, my road car at the beginning of the year was a Fiesta ST…I know. It also had full ‘GT40’ stripes…I know. But here’s why; I wanted a fun, chuck-able and reasonably practical car to drive every day. I wasn’t prepared to wait for a sunny weekend to enjoy whatever classic or competition car was nestling the garage at the time, I wanted every day to be fun behind the wheel.

The Fiesta did the job, but the trouble was that to most people it wasn’t that credible. It also drank like a football hooligan thanks to the lack of a 6th gear. And as if all of those weren’t enough to make me go in search of something more sensible, the news came that my wife and I were expecting our second little boy. My mind was made up, I needed to lose the stripes and gain some back doors.

So what does an almost-30 year old motoring presenter who wants to be taken seriously but still wants to smile on the commute, happy in the knowledge that he’s halving his personal polar bear count at the same time as providing for the family, drive?

An Alfa Romeo, of course.

I’d always wanted an Alfa, but stories of unreliability, spontaneous combustion and depreciation that comes with a G-force warning had always put me off. The words “if you’re going to own an Alfa, do it as a company car” have stuck with me, even if their original speaker hasn’t (was that Jezza too?). But anyway, you have to have a company car for that plan to work out.

We all remember how we felt at key moments in our lives don’t we; the birth of your children, the day you got married, the day you told your Dad that you wanted to buy an Alfa. (Just me on the last one? Ok…)

My Dad has always been my go-to man when it comes to cars. After-all he’s my petrolhead inspiration; the person I followed into motorsport, the person I spent hours with in the garage tinkering with various project cars, the person I always speak to first if I’m thinking of changing my car. However, it seemed, at that moment he didn’t share my enthusiasm to open this next chapter in my motoring story.

He wasn’t impressed. He was also unconvinced with my rationale for going Italian; my wife was far more understanding, given our need for an extra two doors and bigger boot. My Dad’s raised eyebrow, though was justified. In actual fact I had plumped for a 159 saloon, so in theory I only really gained one extra door, and the boot is probably comparable with the Fiesta one it replaced, but with less loading area. (Whoops!)

Now, here is the bit you probably scanned down for before reading any words. What have I had to replace? Well the pre-Alfa me (I think of myself as a changed person now) would have expected a big list here, as I’m sure you do. I’m sorry to disappoint; only the O/S driveshaft and a glow plug have warranted spanner contact. And when you consider

Who made a better job of decorating that GM chassis?

that the engine came from a Vauxhall, you can hardly blame Alfa Romeo for the latter.

It does have the odd quirk. For example the engine management light comes on from time to time (read down to see what I think about that!), and resets itself when it realises that there isn’t a problem. It’s a common problem with 159s apparently – the car’s way of telling you that the battery has dropped a little voltage…or that’s what a real-life Italian Alfa man told me when I called the manufacturer. And it doesn’t have a single cup holder, though it has an integrated cooled drinks compartment that doesn’t even fit a carton of Ribena.

Performance-wise, the car is superb. One of the most fun ‘sensible’ driving cars I have owned was a 2008 Astra SRI 150 Sport Hatch, so when you consider that the 159 JTDM shares the same 1.9 engine as the Astra, it’s no surprise that the oily bits do their job well. The fact that the car is built on a GM platform is a bit like a fly falling asleep on the screen while you’re watching a brilliant movie, but in practice it just means you’re a little less reliant upon Italian design. It’s planted, comes with Brembo brakes as standard being the Lux, and is refined…ish.

The Alfa is comfortable, and the dashboard is simply stunning, which is good as I probably spend more of my life looking at that than I do looking at my wife. And the exterior of the 159 makes any other saloon this side of a Rover P5 look dull. I can’t help but glance back one, twice, even three times as I walk away after parking up. (I once fell in a bush admiring the car’s looks…)

But the best bit of all is the ownership experience. Driving an Alfa Romeo genuinely makes you feel like a hundred times the petrolhead you once were. You feel like a changed man, you walk differently (depending on what type of bush it was), and you believe that the world sees you differently. It doesn’t of course.

The shape of Alfas to come?

Telling someone you drive an Alfa Romeo never fails to raise a nod of approval though, even if it is sometimes accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Turning up in an Alfa Romeo ensures you look like you know your cars, and that you’re so confident with your choice of lifestyle, you don’t mind if it’s spent at the side of the road from time to time.

Not many marques this side of something exotic offer the character, the passion and the pub conversation that you get with an Alfa. And with the new models rumoured to be ditching GM for Maserati underpinnings, that looks set to continue. And the reviews were right; Alfa really have upped the build quality and reliability, in equal measure.

So I can’t fault the Alfa, not really. I’m smitten (and, most importantly so is my Dad!) and quite honestly I can’t see myself going back to a ‘normal’ car any time soon. It’s sensible, yet ridiculous. Beautiful yet simple. Powerful yet disarming. If you haven’t tried an Alfa yet, you owe it to yourself to do so, quickly.

I might even try one with a proper engine next…

Are you a petrolhead? Follow me on Twitter HERE. 

Alfa Romeo: Why wouldn’t you?

For as long as there have been barns, people have been parking vehicles in them and forgetting where they left them. It stands to reason that the term ‘barn find’ probably goes back to ancient times. Of course listing your rare chariot on eBay would have been decidedly more difficult back then.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the tradition seems to have stuck, and it’s impossible to do a search on any online classic car classifieds without coming across a vehicle which – judging by its description – has been ‘found’ in a barn.

I find it strange that so many people forgot they parked their car in a barn long enough for someone to find it years later and list it on eBay as if it was some kind of exotic discovery. Also, surely the number of vehicles ‘found’ in barns has now overtaken the world’s population of barns? (I haven’t even tried to research that fact by the way, let me know if you have…)

Occasionally, very occasionally a ‘barn find’ comes along that makes the magazine editors run for their pens and sets the viral social media machine in motion. But invariably this will be something rare and exotic like a Ferrari 250 GTO that was left in an old shed owned back in the day by a now-defunct racing team, and found by the new land owner whilst clearing the site for redevelopment. A car that, even showing signs of being parked up under a leaky barn roof would still be worth more than the average house. By the way, I would suggest that is the very minimum qualifying criteria for a car listed as a ‘barn find’.

I say that, because surely (hopefully?) we must have run out of Morris Minors owned by little old ladies whose husbands passed away decades ago, leaving the old family car parked at the bottom of the garden. And let’s be honest the term ‘barn find’ was never that great anyway. At best it conjures up images of perished master cylinders, seized gearboxes and mouse-holed seats. At worst, it’s not just the seats that have holes.

So why all of a sudden has ‘barn find’ seemingly become a fashionable way of drawing attention to one in ten classified ads? I can only assume it’s because the people who left cars rotting at the bottom of their gardens have noticed the similarities between the state (sorry, condition) of their car, and the exotica that has from time-to-time been found nestling in some dusty old out-building in an old farm building somewhere near Sienna.

The difference, though is that a 1988 Sierra LX is not nearly in the same league, and it’s definitely not worth as much – financially or sentimentally – as something that started life rolling off a production line in Maranello.

So, if before reading this you were about to list your rusty classic (ahem!) car as a ‘barn find’, save us all the frustration and just be honest; it’s knackered, has been neglected for years and you just want to get a few quid before it needs sweeping up.

Alternatively of course, we could just go back to describing every car for sale as “mint”. At least we all knew where we were then.

For the latest petrolhead ramblings, you can follow me on Twitter – see you there!

Have you ever had the engine management light flash up on your car when you’ve started it up in the morning? The first time it happens, the dread washes over you, you stare in disbelief, imagining in that moment the flash of yellow recovery lights and the ‘tut tut’ of the local garage.

But the second time it happens, you simply restart the car to cancel ‘limp home mode’ and get on with your day, making your own ‘tuts’ at the inconvenience of having the little yellow outline of an engine block illuminated on the dashboard on your way to work.

So why don’t you panic the second time round? Because when you got the light checked out, it turned out to be something insignificant and you were told by the garage not to worry about the light, it’s just ‘letting you know’. (Or that’s what I was told anyway when my Alfa Romeo flashed up with ‘Check Engine Immediately’ and it turned out to be the battery which had dropped a bit of voltage.)

A decade ago – maybe more – the engine management light meant grave things. The panic was justified; he who dared to ignore the warning faced big bills in the morning. And surely that’s how it should be. What is there to warn us of imminent catastrophic damage if the final warning is simply something which dealers turn off and tell us not to worry about? If the engine management light comes on to tell you stories of non-critical failures, why would you think it was any different when things get serious?

With all the technology on modern cars, you’d think they could programme the ECU to consider the seriousness of the problem, and alert the driver accordingly. In a sense, I feel that we’re back in the carburettor days, before we had computers to run our lives and our commutes. Let me explain: Just as you knew there was a problem when your Morris Marina started making funny noises, or your Cortina started back-firing, our only real warning now is when the car grinds to a halt.

Don’t get me wrong, as an Alfa Romeo driver I invariably start the day in a better frame of mind when my dashboard isn’t lit up like a Christmas tree. But having been told on numerous occasions that my engine management isn’t anything to worry about, it’s clearly an unconscious and somewhat irrational fear of Christmas trees that plays on my mind, rather than the worry that my car will break down.

Likewise, a girl I work with has had a series of ‘critical’ lights and messages flashing up for the last six months on her Citroen C3, and despite numerous trips to the local dealer, a fault is yet to be diagnosed.

So the problem is probably complacency. But who, or what is to blame; drivers, manufacturers, cars, Father Christmas?

If there is such a job as ‘Engine Management Light Programming Officer’ then it’s clearly his or her fault. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. I for one dread the day that my car develops a serious fault, because I’ll likely find out too late, and unlike a Morris Marina or Ford Cortina, such things are inevitably more expensive to sort out these days.

So what’s the solution?

Well how about replacing some of those charging points at motorway services (that no one uses), with code readers. You park up, plug in your car and check the seriousness of any lights flashing on your dashboard.

Peace of mind, less chance of a surprise big repair bill, and finally a way to stop the moss growing in the car parking spaces reserved for electric cars.

For the latest petrolhead ramblings, you can follow me on Twitter – see you there!

How big a PetrolHead are you? Can you identify every single car in this montage?

All of the cars pictured at some point have featured on either my Twitter or YouTube (or both in many cases!) or even right here on this very site.

Get every one correct and you could win a supercar!

OK, you won’t win a real-life car, but I will send one of my Jaguar XJ220 business car(d)s to one correct guesser, picked at random. Make sure you include your postal address along with your list of cars by email via the ‘Contact’ section of the site – good luck!

There’s nothing like searching the classifieds for a three grand Porsche and coming across a Ferrari Testarossa to wake you up first thing in the morning, is there?!

Should you be in the market for a Porsche 924, keep your hand clasped tightly around your wallet. Very tightly. For nestling within the ads is a beautiful Ferrari 512 Testarossa, which is surely a tempting – if slightly more expensive – proposition for any budding sports car owner.

Pistonheads is the place to be if you’d like to get your hands on either of these great cars, and while I’m sure Coys didn’t mean to post their Ferrari immediately below their Porsche 924S, it serves as a stark reminder to any petrolhead sat behind his or her desk this morning, that there’s still some way to go.

Ultimate classified ad motivation!

Oh, by the way if you do want to go even further with your motivational reading material, here’s a great article from when supercar legend Chris Harris was working with Pistonheads.

Happy accidental supercar hunting…

Follow Paul on Twitter