There must be some amazing incidents in the careers of all rally drivers. Can you give us an example? JS
Yes, dozens...even hundreds. Here’s one.
The late Johnny Hellier and Dave Williamson were making pace notes in their locally assembled Peugeot 504 pick-up, up the side of the Taita Hills, and paused for a few seconds at the top where the control point would be, to ensure it tallied exactly with the start of notes they had already made earlier for going down the other side.
As all was well and as they had notes for the heart-stopping downhill through endless hairpins and bumps, they decided to descend at full rally speed.
While they were having that conversation, two kids who had seen the car arrive fairly sedately decided to hitch a lift and, unnoticed, sneaked into the loadbed at the back, holding onto the external rollbar.
The plunge down the side of a mountain for the next 20 minutes, with yumps and bumps and rocks and never-ending sideways-sliding round sharp corners, was not sedate. It would have felt like the world’s bumpiest, wildest, scariest helter-skelter ride.
As the road levelled and straightened out at the bottom, Johnny looked in his rear-view mirror...for the first time. History does not record what he said, but he did immediately stop the car. The kids, plastered in fine grey dust, just leapt out and ran as if they were being chased by a cheetah.
Before the crew had even undone their safety belts to check the children’s condition and offer them a gentler ride back home (now about 20 kms back up the hill) the kids had “gone”.
There should be a moral to a story like that. Any suggestions? I’ll start you off with one: “Never hop onto the back of a pick-up if the driver is wearing a helmet and double-harness safety belts”.
