The Olde BP Rally was organised by the Historic Rally Association and conducted on August 6-8. The Director was Rob Knight, assisted by Bob Watson
Naish / Runnalls again in a wet and shortened one
The 2004 Olde BP Rally was run from Friday 6 through to Sunday 8 August, and again organised by the HRA with Rob Knight stepping up as Director assisted by wife Pam and Bob Watson.
Event documentation covers featured photos of Don Thomson, John Pryce and Graham Hoinville together with quotes attributed to them from the 1961 event briefing.
The start was moved from Melbourne to the Ballarat Light Car Club rooms at the Ballarat Airport, which was also the finish.
There were suspicions that the start ballot was rigged, particularly when cars 1,2 and 3 finished in 1,4 and 2 outright positions!
A very long Division 1 headed north through Kingston, Carisbrook (fuel), Tarnagulla, Wedderburn (fuel), Wycheproof (fuel), Beulah, Jeparit, Lorquon to Nhill. The field was decimated early at Daisy Hill, with only five crews entering control correctly, and no one getting the via on the “vestigial”road. Swan and De Vaus recovered best from this, but it cost them victory.
Wet and slippery roads coupled with challenging navigation using only the Broadbents Western Half map, meant that at Nhill only four crews had visited all controls within late time. Naish/Runnalls 120 led from Swan/De Vaus 161, Wallis/Nicholas 192 and Officer/McKenzie 219.
Division 2 continued south across the Little Desert through Goroke and Bringalbert to Narracoorte for a welcome breakfast. Some more amendments had to be made for wet weather as the route headed back into Victoria to Harrow (fuel), Douglas to Horsham. Outright leading positions did not alter on the shortened division.
Another fine social gathering was held at the Horsham Golf Club, with bus kindly laid on to ferry everyone to and from. Many past competitors and officials were in attendance.
At the Sunday morning restart, competitors were informed that the final division would consist of a run down the highway to Ballarat, meaning no change to outright positions, and concluding with a sub-event on the BLCC autocross track, that was won by Ian Swan.
Of the 41 starters only five failed to finish.
