Invasion of the Sprites! (or how 14 spridgets invaded Burnie for the Lactos Heritage Rally)

NEW!!! John Sprinzel's article on the 1998 Lactos Rally is here.

Every now and then an event comes along that cries out "You just have to do this". This was one of those events.

Firstly, John Sprinzel, was coming out to compete in the event. As I am sure you all know, John was one of the best known sprite rally drivers, having competed under the Speedwell, Donald Healey and BMC banner. He and his spridgets competed in such events as the Alpine Rally, the Monte Carlo, the London-Sydney Marathon, as well as circuit races in Europe and North America. He worked at Donald Healey Motors as well as the special tuning company he founded - Speedwell. He is an important part of the competition history of our beloved sprites. The fact that John was competing in a bugeye in this event was a great incentive to be part of the event!

Secondly, the chance to (legally) dash around the wonderful driving roads of Tasmania at close to racing speeds was too much to turn down.

Thirdly, there were going to be 14 spridgets competing in the rally (out of 42 entries in the Heritage rally!). This just had to be one of the most memorable gathering of sprites in open competition for quite some time and I wanted to be part of it! Peter Brice, my co-driver on the '96 Three Peaks Rally and fellow sprite circuit racer, joined me again for this event.

This was a "special stage rally" which mixed transport stages (road legal speeds but with navigation and tight time limits), and special (closed road) stages which were driven as fast as you were prepared to go. In both cases, we used the road book which has most significant road features were marked on a "tulip diagram" with running distances used throughout. Since distance measurement was critical, cars needed to have either the classic Halda or a modern equivalent. We used a VDO minicockpit. The only difficulty with the road book was that not all the critical road features (from the driver's viewpoint) were marked, nor was there any indication of the corner's speed. You could do what we did - rely on the driver's judgement, or you could purchase a set of pace notes from a 3rd person. Not having used them before and unsure of their value, we decided to pass. Later on we discovered that this was a poor decision.

For many of the spridget drivers (including us), this was our first special stage rally. We have been road racing for quite a while and had done some navigation rallies (like Three Peaks) but nothing like this event. Out of the sprite contingent John Sprinzel, Tony Bennetto, Richard Dutton, and Phil Nichols had done this style of event before. Tony and Phil had also done the '97 Lactos Heritage rally.

I should mention that as well as the 42 entries in the classic section of the rally, there were another 34 cars in the 'open' section. This was comprised of all sorts of modern, rally and highly modified competition cars. We all did the same stages but all the times and places were computed separately. Only limited modifications were allowed to the Heritage Rally cars so for the most part the open cars were a bit faster.

The first choice was the easiest one - which car to use. It had to be the LHD bugeye "Redcar" since she had done the La Carrerra 5 times (in the hands of previous owner Daren Stone) . Peter and I had also used Redcar for the Three Peaks Rally back in '96. Some of the other choices were a bit vexing - engines, gearboxes, diff, roll cage, repairs etc. etc. This was made much more difficult by uncertainty over eligibility, classing, and interpretation of rules for scrutineering. All this is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say we were rather concerned about how the cars would be judged. I and a few others were worried enough to make changes to roll cages, bodywork, suspension and even engine capacity. In the end, Redcar had a 1380cc street engine, standard box, 4.2 diff, front disc brakes and new fibreglass bonnet. The front suspension was pretty stiff with a 3/4" sway bar and 500lb springs. The rear suspension was fairly stock except for the inclusion of a panhard rod and telescopic dampers (Spax).

Now I would be rather remiss if I didn't talk about car preparation. Even though I started the preparation way back in October (rust repairs, bonnet ducting and fitting of the glass bonnet by local sprite body specialist Roger Gaunt), somehow I found myself behind the eightball. Getting the gearbox back from its rebuild took a long time and this put the whole testing program way off track (so far that it never happened!). A discussion with the CAMS(The national sanctioning body - the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport) office convinced me of the need to get a new roll cage at the last minute. So the car was (still sans engine) out of my hands for another 31/2 days with less than a week to go! Peter Brice was an enormous help getting the car (nearly) ready in time to catch the boat. We finally fired the engine up on Sunday evening, I took it for a test drive on Monday morning after picking up the tyres (yet another muck up over tyre availability). I packed the car, checked oil and water and disaster - the whole plug came out of the top of the radiator (it was a cross flow radiator with the brass fill plug in the top corner. The sleeve into which the plug screws broke away). I had to leave in order to make the ferry (it was 1:30 on Monday afternoon and I had to be there by 4:30 for a 6pm departure). So I taped the plug back in-situ with race tape. I took lots of extra water with me.

This didn't work too well and I could only do 15 minutes at a time before cooling down and refilling with water. This wasn't helped by the slow and stop start traffic that day. The trip took forever. With the boat in site the electrics packed up whilst waiting at the lights. I had to push the car across the intersection and lift the bonnet. I busily checked and wiggled connections and tried again. It worked! I hurried down to the dock, just making it to the boat just as the trucks and busses were being loaded on. As soon as I got the car onboard, I rolled upstairs 10 minutes before the boat departed and said hello to Peter, and fellow competitors Chris and Owen Crombie. I got the evil eye treatment! Peter had been pacing up and down in a rather unhappy state. After a few beers to settle down, and lots of explaining on my part, Peter christened us (me) "Just in Time Racing - It will be OK in the end".

We still had quite a few things to sort out, mostly little things except for uncooperative headlights and indicators. We thought we had fixed them on Sunday, but no.....

We worked on the car on and off right up to scrutineering on Friday. This was interspersed with reconnaissance runs over the course and working out the minicockpit calibration, communication signals and the like. Peter ended up making a new lighting subloom with 7 wire trailer core to cure the intermittent and difficult to diagnose problems. It worked first time after wasting at least 2 days trying to track down the problem.

One problem emerged after the reconnaissance - brake rotor wear. I had Carbon/Kevlar pads that work very very well and don't fade; but their downside was rotor wear. Whilst the rotors had worn a bit on the previous events (3 peaks, Winton Sprints, Marysville Meander, various club drives), the wear had more than doubled by the end of the reconnaissance. This was very serious. We were now below minimum specs on the rotor and the event hadn't even started. Peter was going to bring a set of Bendix Metal Kings as a backup pads but he forgot to pack them. So we visited the local auto parts store (again!) and the only pads they had were standard road pads. Oh well, what has to be...

The pre-event line up was impressive. It was great to see all the sprites and midgets lined up outside the control, all looking wonderfully well prepared with enthusiastic teams. Wonderful! Added to that there were numerous other interesting cars including a 100/4, MGB, 911 RSR, '65 Mustang, '64 Iso Rivolta, '65 Lotus Elan, '65 Elfin Clubman, '62 E-type Jaguar, '70 Volvo P1800E, a pair of Porsche 356s, '63 Cooper S, a pair of Ferrari 308 GT4s, '62 Kharmann Ghia, a couple of BMW 2002s, and a grand old 1936 Delarge D8/70 Le Mans.

The first day of competition (Friday) saw two relatively short special and simple touring stages designed just to get us dialed in. Unfortunately, we hadn't had a chance to bed in the pads nor test the new accelerator pedal we made (to get us through scrutineering - with my huge feet I don't normally need one!) and when the brakes started to fade and the pedal began sinking, my foot started pressing the accelerator at the same time. This all happened at a slow corner after a fast stretch and despite braking harder and harder, the car wasn't slowing down - argh! We spun (or should I say I spun). Peter was remarkably calm considering

The communication device wasn't working at all which didn't help - I couldn't understand a single word Peter was saying. We ended up trying hand signals on the next stage and that wasn't much better. We missed a turn - Peter wasn't quite so calm this time!!!!! We finished the stage with smoke pouring off the front brakes. It didn't look good for the rest of the event.

The two incidents cost us somewhere around 45 to 60 seconds on the two special stages and it put us way back in the field. It did give us some things to think about, especially how were had to communicate. We decided to leave the road pads on and drive slower - better to finish the event than pulling out with one day to go! We were placed 25th after the first two stages, some 58 seconds behind the fastest sprite (Simon Hughes in 11th). On the first day we travelled a total of 67.58 km with 13.3km of special stages. Our aggregate special stage time was 8:31.

John Sprinzel and his co-driver Allan Bennetto had some mechanical problems (a grub screw came loose on the Weber causing the car to run very roughly on two cylinders) leaving them back in 40th place a further 1:20 behind us.

After the transport stage back to Burnie, the cars were impounded overnight. It was good not to have to work on the car for the first time in weeks!!!

Next morning we had an hour or so between collection time and start time (there are advantages to being back in the field!) We used this to check over the car and talk strategy. We checked the pads to see how they bedded in. They looked pretty good despite the smoking we had seen. We decided to run the standard pads all Saturday and put the good pads in on Sunday if the rotor wear looked OK. This seemed like a good idea because Sunday's special stages were the hardest on brakes (long downhill sections followed by hairpin bends!). I didn't want to drive those stages without good brakes!

Day two was a long one - a total of 335.21km with 8 special stages (102.46km), finishing close to dark somewhere around 8pm or so. This was probably the best driving day of the event with some truly magnificent roads.

I was under strict instructions to take it easy so I tried pretty hard to be smooth and quick without getting the car out of shape. I also tried to be as easy on the brakes but since the front brakes were largely ineffective this was not easy. Since we had very good rear shoes (Carbon/Kevlar), straight-line braking became the order of the day!

The first special stage was Mount Leslie (5.45km); I drove pretty slowly on this stage, getting both my confidence and Peter's back into order. We were 24th fastest on this stage, 14 seconds behind fastest sprite Simon Hughes in 13th place. John had clearly decided to lay back and enjoy the drive, cruising along in 37th place. His bugeye (1275, disk brakes, fibreglass bonnet) was running well now although it was understeering somewhat.

The next special stage was Hellyer Gorge. This was a magnificent, smooth road with a combination of tight and twisty road down along the gorge itself and fast open corners leading down into and up out of the gorge. At 15.55km, it was a relatively long stage. This stage finally saw our new tires bedded in nicely. The twitchiness had settled down and it was not as inclined to severe oversteer. I started to feel more comfortable with the car, but was still 21st fastest, some 38 seconds behind Simon Hughes (fastest sprite in 8th place), but now I was the 4th fastest sprite, quite a surprise given the lack of brakes. It gave me more confidence for the next stage - Savage River. Our car had started to burn oil but I had brought along 2 or 3 litres of Mobil 1 so I used about a litre or so at that point.

Savage River was the most scenic and longest special stage on the event (26.12km), beautiful, smooth, fast but with an enormous drop of one side of the road and the hill on the other. We started the stage behind the big Healey of Nigel Nichols (the cars are separated by 1 minute intervals), but managed to catch and pass him on this stage. That was a big thrill, seeing the green Healey in the distance and slowly catching and passing around the outside of a tight 2nd gear corner! I was well and truly into the groove by now, managing to get 15th fastest (3rd fastest sprite in 16:39), but still a whopping 44 seconds behind Hughes (7th). Chris Crombie and Lara Milvain had some bad luck in her midget, it overheated 5 minutes from the start of the stage - a result of a broken water fitting. They got going again but lost 9 or 10 minutes in the process.

We had a terrific lunch at Savage River, and had a little time for servicing. I got a major surprise when I checked the oil - we had started to burn siginificant amounts of oil. I used up the rest of my supply and started scrounging around for any supplies. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, the only chance I had was other competitors or their service crews (some people should be so lucky!!). Incredibly, no-one else had a stash of oil in the service vehicles but fellow club member Simon Hughes kindly loaned me his spare supply after checking that his car wasn't using any oil.

After lunch, interim results were posted and we were pleasantly surprised at the morning's work. We saw that we had a good chance of catching Richard Dutton in his bugeye and Tony Bennetto was traveling at just a little faster than our pace! I got a bit excited at this point. Peter quickly reminded me that due to my errors on the first day we had lost far too much ground to make up. I still thought that we'd catch Richard, but Simon was impossible and Tony unlikely in the extreme. It was also at lunch we discovered that Tasmanian Phil Nichols had a lose in his bugeye on the Hellyer Gorge stage. He hit a post sideways, pushing in the bodywork behind the passenger side door. Luckily they managed to continue (without injury) despite losing about 15 minutes on the stage. They had been 4th fastest sprite up to that point.

The afternoon started with Savage River reverse (21.23km). This was mostly downhill and very hard on brakes. Part way through the stage I felt that something wasn't quite right and backed right off. That was lucky because just after the end of the stage we pulled up for fuel and heard grinding from the front brakes - we had gone through to the backing plates already! So on the side of the road, in front of a gathering crowd, we changed back to the Carbon/Kevlar pads. A full half day before we hoped to change! I wasn't sure we would finish the event now. We placed 17th on that stage, still 3rd fastest sprite but some 31 seconds behind Simon (fastest sprite again and 9th overall). From this point on, I tried not to use the brake pedal on transport stages, relying on engine braking and handbrake.

Hellyer Gorge reverse (15.33km) was next. We did this stage twice, once now and again on Sunday. It would have to be my favourite stage - great fun to drive. For the first time in the event, we had decent brakes and I drove accordingly! We were 13th fastest, fastest sprite but only 1 second faster than Simon. That was my favourite drive of the event. We didn't give ourselves any chance (so no pressure) and the car felt really good. The course had a series of corners where a tightening 3rd gear right hander tightened into an opening 2nd gear left-hander. We had the tail hanging out from one side to the other as we flipped from right to left on the throttle - it was terrific fun!

Simon reversed places at the next special stage (West Ridgely, 8.09km). He was 13th fastest and I was 15th fastest some 5 seconds behind. Tony Bennetto was 10 seconds further back in 21st. It was clear that at this rate we were going to catch Richard and would be tantalisingly close to Tony by the end of the event. On this stage Chris Crombie had a minor lose in her midget, and while the damage was limited to a bit of fibreglass, one of their split Webers started leaking petrol profusely. After shutting of the fuel to one carburettor, they managed to limp along on two cylinders. They managed to get it fixed next morning but it cost them an enormous amount of time on the last 3 special stages of the day.

Tewkesbury (8.21km) was the most significant stage on Saturday because of mechanical problems for both Simon Hughes and ourselves. Immediately after the start of the stage I could tell something was wrong with the brakes. There was no travel at all and the car was having a hard time accelerating. The brakes had jammed on!! I tried to persevere but the further we went, the worse the problem became. In the end I could only pull 4000rpm in 2nd under full throttle. In a flash of inspiration I tried to pull the pedal up with my foot and something seemed to come loose and the problem went away. Too bad this was about 400m before the finish. We believe that a stone was caught in the pedal assembly (where the return spring is located) thereby not allowing the brake pedal to return correctly. Every time I applied the brake, the stone probably wedged itself lower. I was pretty sure that our event was over, even after I pulled the pedal up. We were already very marginal on rotor wear and this probably pushed us over the limit. It seemed the chase was over. It was even worse luck for Simon and Owen. They had an oil hose blow off a fitting in the middle of the stage. They pulled over, lifted the bonnet and re-fitted the hose but discovered that they didn't have enough oil to continue - and Simon had given me his spare oil!!! Ouch! Luckily a local farmer brought them some tractor oil but they lost around 51/2 minutes on that stage. Everyone told me to steer clear of Simon for a while. Unfortunately we finished 29 seconds behind Tony Bennetto on that stage, pretty much blowing any chance we may have had of catching him. At the first opportunity we checked the rotors and they weren't as bad as we feared. We could only rationalise that the rotor wear was worse at relatively cold brake temperatures.

The last stage on Saturday was the City of Burnie stage, run through some side streets, over a railway crossing and up a steep windy hill. The crowd was enormous! It was a great fun drive. We were equal fastest sprite (10th) with Tony Bennetto, Simon was 4 seconds further back probably because of the dim conditions. Russell Cox (MkIII Sprite) had fuel and alternator dramas on this stage just managing to limp home. The problems were fixed before the start of the next day.

With the car back in impound, we had to decide whether we would cruise home to finish or drive hard to try and catch Tony who was now the highest placed sprite. We had been making a lot of time on Tony after the pad change but Tewkesbury almost certainly put paid to any chances we had. We decided to cruise home for a finish.

Next morning when I had the interim placings in my hands, I had changed my mind - we were going for it. Glory or nothing!!! Peter just shook his head. He didn't argue because he too is a racer. He also enjoyed the fast driving and the thrill of the chase. He did keep reminding me it was an impossible chase but a chase none the less. The day was held over a total distance of 306.73km with 8 special stages (total 73.54km).

First up was Camena (5.94km) - I was fastest sprite again (12th), just ahead of Tony (13th just 1 second behind) with Simon in 15th a further 1 second behind. Sunday was fun because we were sandwiched between the Volvo P1800E of local grandparents Graham and Patricia Kent and the beautifully presented Porsche 356 of Stewart Webster and Geoff Taylor. Peter and I decided that come what may, we would not let a Volvo beat us (especially one driven by grandparents). Both teams were very friendly, chatting and comparing times after every stage. Stewart had hoped to beat us, at least on the higher speed stages, but we had comfortable margins on both of them all day. It was alittle ironic because Stewart had only recently sold his own bugeye, supposedly (according to co-driver Geoff) because it wasn't fast enough for him!!

Next was Leven Valley (7.48km). We 3rd fastest sprite (16th) behind Simon and Chris Crombie (who finally seemed to be "having a go"). We lost 10 seconds to Simon but gained 5 seconds on Tony.

Isandula was the scariest special stage, at least from the description. One of the "Locations to look for" said "CAUTION Road goes left overcrest. The left is immediately over the crest with a drop into the paddocks if you stuff it up". Another one said "CAUTION Road goes slightly left on crest. We mean that! You must turn slightly left on the crest. This is a large crest and you will get airborne. Make sure you are turning slightly left before you leave the ground!" The stage was 8.1km. We took it pretty easy over the crest (it is hard to ignore a screaming navigator!), but still managed to get a little airborne. We 12th, just behind Simon (11th) by 4 seconds, but ahead of Tony (15th) by 7 seconds. This stage unfortunately saw the retirement of Stewart and Neil Blaney in their immaculate bugeye. The back end stepped out on a slow tight corner, they hit a bank and rolled the car. Both Stewart and Neil were OK, but lots of panel damage to the car. Nevertheless they managed to drive it back OK.

Gentle Annie (15.49km) was a magnificent drive with a mixture of tight sections and fast sweepers. It was a bit rough in places and we bottomed out pretty hard a couple of times, especially over a narrow wooden bridge. The back roads section of this stage was quite bumpy. We only just made the start of this stage, the electrics packed up again. With only two minutes until we were due to start the special stage, we had no power at all! Some rapid and agricultural engineering we fixed the problem (a crimp fitting was cut off and the bare wire wrapped around the battery terminal!). The bugeye's suspension had pretty much given up by now. Both front and rear shocks felt pretty dead and the car was bouncing all over the place on the bumpy sections. We were hitting about 110mph on fast downhill and slightly bumpy sweepers. I wasn't prepared to rev any harder but the hills were steep enough that I had to feather the throttle to stop doing so! Pretty amazing as the engine pretty normally runs out of puff at about 6000 rpm. We managed an amazing 9th place but still were 7 seconds behind Simon (6th) but a whopping 22 seconds in front of Tony (13th).

Moina (6.82km) was a very fine, scenic road and yet again great driving fun but a big horsepower uphill stage. This was the last stage before a magnificent and lavish lunch at the Cradle Mountain Lodge. What extravagance! The only shame was we didn't have much time to enjoy lunch (30 minutes between check-in and check-out). We were 9th fastest again but Simon pulled an amazing 4th fastest, 14 whole seconds ahead. Tony was 6 seconds behind us in 13th again. Richard Dutton and Sarah Bradbury (bugeye) retired after this stage as Sarah was beginning to feel quite ill.

After lunch we revisited the Hellyer Gorge reverse. This was such fun on the Saturday so we were looking forward to it. I had become pretty serious about things now. Instead of just having fun (sideways) I drove cleaner and faster, taking 16 seconds off my time but this time Simon beat me! In fact he whooped me by 13 seconds. I couldn't believe it! Simon was 6th, we were 9th again and Tony was 15th, 29 seconds behind!

The last two stages were also reverses of day 2 special stages. Mt Leslie reverse (5.47km) saw us in 11th, 3 seconds behind Simon in 7th (close racing at this point!) and 8 seconds in front of Tony in 16th. Peter Westcott's MkII Sprite (restored immediately prior to the event) collected a post on this stage, spinning him around and backing him into a bank. They managed to get going again after some road side panel beating.

At the final special stage Oldina reverse (8.88km), we ended up with the 12th fastest time, just 1 second behind Simon (11th) and 10 seconds ahead of Tony in 14th. Was it enough? We didn't think so but we wouldn't know until the presentation later that night.

We were over the moon with the way things went on Sunday. We actually finished! We nursed the car as much as possible on the transport stages but didn't compromise on the special stages. We could hold our heads high despite being blown out of the water on the horsepower stages. We were very happy and relieved. We had been checking the rotors and oil before every special stage and just praying that the engine would hold out (it was now down on power and had a slight knocking noise at startup) and that we would still have rotors during the stage. We lucked out on both fronts.

We gathered all the sprites (competition, support and spectators) for a big spridget photo after the event. Both Tony and I were nervous about the results although Peter kept telling me we couldn't have made up enough time.

As it turns out, he was right - we didn't make it. We finished 14th, missing out on catching Tony (13th) by a mere 8 secs (1:56:11 vs 1:56:19) over 18 special stages that totaled 189.3km of racing. I can only rue my mistakes on day one and the brake drama at Tewkesbury on day two. Oh well. Tony is an experienced and wily competitor in these events. He has been 3rd on handicap at the famous Targa Tasmania and was 4th in last years Lactos Rally. We were beaten by an excellent competitor. Simon worked hard to catch the time he lost on Tewkesbury but finished in a very creditable 15th position (1:57:07) to win his class.

The event was one of the best events I have ever competed in. The organisation was superb, the roads great, the atmosphere relaxed (for the most part!) and the competition friendly but fierce. For the entire event, kids and (sometimes) their families lined the roads waving at the cars as they went past. They seem to love the bugeye!

After the event Peter and I went driving with Chris and Owen Crombie. They showed us the pace notes that Chris and Lara Milvain used and Simon and Owen used during the event. I believe that Tony used his own pace notes. I was really impressed how useful the pace notes were. We had found that while the minicockpit was extremely accurate on the transport stages, it was woeful on the special stages. At times, Peter was calling corners after we had already got to them (including "Caution! Dangerous corner!"). This caused us a few hairy moments. Also, there were a number of corners that I think should have been in the road book but weren't. We had a few moments on these as well! In contrast, the pace notes did not rely on distance, but included an entry for every corner or bend in the road along with a speed rating and intermediate distance. Where it really paid off was blind corners, particularly those at the bottom of hills where any caution you showed cost you speed all the way up the hill (at least for small HP motors like sprites!). In essence, the pace notes removed the driver's uncertainty over what is coming up next. They protected you against deceptive corners where you went too slow (because it looked like it was tightening but wasn't) or too fast (where it did tighten when you expected it to flow). In either case it cost you time and in the latter could cause an accident if you didn't have a sufficient margin of safety or didn't react fast enough. All in all, well worth it!

I can highly commend this event to anyone who loves driving and competing. I'll be back that is for sure. Peter says he will co-drive for me as long as the car is ready 3 months before the event and be placed in impound at his place (where I can't fiddle with it)!!!! Next time I would like a bit more HP (my street motor was no match for Simons 3/4 race motor), better suspension, proper race seats, and pace notes.

There were a few accidents over the weekend. A new Lotus Elise, the Iso Rivolta, a Ferrari 308GTB, Opel Monza, and the four sprites all had offs that caused varying degrees of damage. Of these, the Opel, Ferrari, and the Blaney's bugeye didn't finish. With the exception of the Ferrari (fire) the damage was pretty straight forward given enough dollars.

While I keep talking about the competitive cars at the front, you should not get the idea that if you don't have a very fast car you shouldn't do the event. There were a few pretty standard cars there, and while they may not be near the pointy end of the field, they all had a great time. You only had to drive as hard as you wanted to and the roads were such fun that the event would be great, even at cruising speeds.

John Sprinzel and Alan Bennetto had a fun event with no real dramas after the first day. They pretty much cruised the event placing in the 30s on most stages. They finished the event in 28th place (2:13:08).

All in all, the event was a wonderful experience. John is a very friendly fellow and we all enjoyed our chance to socialize with him and talk about our favourite topic - Sprites! Lots of thanks are due to Tony and Kerry Bennetto for bringing John out for the event, as well as providing and preparing John's car.. Tony has been competing in racing and rallies in his bugeye for 21 years and now has his own business "The Bugeye Barn".

Here are some of the placings. I should mention that Leigh Mundy in a factory 911 RSR was an easy winner with a handsome time of 1:39:28