Slowly Sideways

I went to the Race Retro show at Stoneleigh Park on Saturday, and I had very enjoyable day out. Race Retro is primarily a historic motor sport show, and one of the key features about the show is the live rally demonstration using many different rally cars, mainly from the Group B era of the early to mid 1980s. This era of rallying was dominated in the early days by Audi quattros, but probably the ultimate rally car of the time was the Lancia Delta S4, which was turbocharged and super charged.

Ultimately these cars just became too powerful and fast for the rally stages and after several fatal accidents in 1986 the cars were banned and the rules were re-written.

Now I had never seen a Delta S4 in the flesh before, as they were banned a couple of years before I went to my first rally, so I was really excited when I saw it in the paddock, would it run on the stage, would I be able to photograph it moving, and hear it running? You bet!

On the first run through the rally stage, the driver lost control slightly after getting on the grass a bit and the car started to spin one way and then the other as the driver fought to regain control, and then it suddenly became apparent that the car was actually spinning out of control and was heading straight to where I was standing. The crowd scattered and the Delta fortunately just gently nudged the crowd barriers as it came to a stand. What a moment.

Here is a picture as the driver was starting to loose the car. Check out his expression in Large.

I'll try and sort out some more pics of the day to go onto Flickr in the next couple of days

After the show I decided to pop over to Chesterton Windmill as it still a nice afternoon and I was over half way there. A few of my pics from there can be seen here