The Spring Tour, organised by the Historic Rally Association and sponsored by Performance Exhaust Ringwood, was held on 3rd and 4th October as a multi-club touring event. Directed by Rob Knight, this event had something for everyone. It started with multiple slalom tests in Victoria Park, Ballarat, followed by a navigational route with 33 vias. After an overnight stop in Colac, Sunday saw a concourse inspection, a town stage and the Mt Leura hillclimb in Camperdown followed by morning and afternoon navigational sections. The event also included an economy run and finished in Geelong. All in all, a complete motoring weekend for the crews.
The provisional “overall results” had Rob Dyer and Ray Daniel first, Chris Stephen and Dee Duncan second and Alan Upton and Mark Laidlay third. However, “outright placings” (only pre 1968 rally cars with an HRA Logbook were eligible), were Alan Upton and Mark Laidlay first, Greg Gibson and Steve Mitchell second and Doug Fernie and Robin Smalley third.
Subsequent to the issue of provisional results, a protest was lodged. See the protest notification here. The protest was upheld by the stewards so that all “informations” not preceded with an “O” board, as required by regulations, had to be removed from the results. As the organisers had omitted to comply with this requirement, the navigational sections of the event were in effect removed. This significantly changed the results.
The amended provisional results, which we have assumed became the final results, had Chris Stephen and Dee Duncan overall first, Rob Dyer and Ray Daniel second and Russell Thorpe and Steven Oake third. The “outright placings” (pre 1968 rally cars with an HRA Logbook), were Russell Thorpe and Steven Oake first, Lindsay Arnold and Adrienne Murray second and Greg Gibson and Steve Mitchell third.
