A Novice Trial 2026 | Day 3

The L Plates were swapped for rally plates for the final day of this year’s A Novice Trial, as the crews geared up for a day of competition and an opportunity to put their training sessions into practice against the timekeeper’s clock.

There was a mixture of excitement and nerves at the start line, as the cars passed under the arch in minute intervals, led away by car number one, the Bentley 4½ of Alfie and Valerie Cheyne. The 1928 Bentley was the oldest car entered and thus had the privilege of being first on the road. Ahead of them were a mixture of four regularities and three tests, punctuated by a mid-event time control, across the 100-mile loop of the North Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire countryside.

The landscape around here has been scarred in recent years by the HS2 project, and the evidence of the massive engineering endeavour was never far away during the day. Its impact was certainly obvious on some of the backroads, which after years of abuse are now pot-holed in the extreme, requiring careful and patient driving at times. Indeed, NASA may want to consider some of the roads from regularity one to test out any equipment for the upcoming Artemis mission. Joking aside, there was certainly a careful hand needed on the tiller at times, an added complication for our newbies that they took in their stride.

They seemed to be taking this regularity rallying lark in their stride as well, with some excellent results on this first reg, with many crews losing little time, and some even posting zeroes between timing points – a fantastic achievement, particularly for those who were competing for the first time. Nobody quite managed to clean it, though Gavin and Ann Crawford and Andrew and Mike Bayliss came close, both leaving the section just one second in debt with the timekeepers.

After settling the nerves on the reg, it was time to head to the day’s opening pair of tests, conducted on the Finmere Airfield, offering plenty of space to get used to driving at speed between the cones. Racers James Dorlin and Ed Pead were fastest on the clock, at 56 seconds, but the Alfa collected a cone, and so it wasn’t a clean run. Therefore, with a time of 58 seconds, Richard Colburn and Roy Gardner had the honour of fastest time and zero penalties, Richard using his own extensive circuit racing experience to secure the time. Perhaps spurred on by their error, Dorlin and Pead went fastest again on the second test, but this time committed no errors and shared a fastest time of 1:01 with Andrew and Mike Bayliss in the Ford Anglia.

Another circuit racer trying his hand at rallying was James Colburn, son of Richard. Competing in a BMW 3.0Si that was campaigned on the 1976 Avon Tour of Britain, James is well used to going fast, but on the second regularity of the day he was excelling at keeping to a steady pace, with the event’s first perfect score for him and navigator Tom Caldwell. This helped to put him and Tom into first place at the midpoint of the rally, but there wasn’t a lot in it, and still plenty of competition to go.

The second half of the event included two more regularities, with a proper test splitting them up that would give the drivers ample opportunity to stretch the legs of their machines. This second set of regs were longer and increased the difficulty of the day’s examination, with more timing points and harder navigation that included a few classic route planners’ tricks; the gamekeepers were upping the stakes. This was reflected in the penalties being picked up, with pretty much everyone racking up the seconds in multiples of ten at one point or another on the regs, even if there were still a few zeroes being posted here and there between some of the timing points. Praise must go to Wesley Berloo and Geert Verdonckt, though, who very nearly cleaned the day’s last regularity, save for being one second early at the first control.

Of course, before anyone could tackle that last reg there was the small matter of the day’s third and final test, and it was a tricky one. Running on the dirt tracks of a farmyard, it was longer than anything the crews had attempted so far, it was faster, and the surface was extraordinarily slippery in parts. One section in particular, marked by a phalanx of ‘care’ boards, was a muddy section before a gateway that had all the traction of greased ice, and resulted in a fair few slides that were out of the hands of the drivers. Experience would count for a lot on this surface, and James Dorlin used all of his to secure a fastest time of 1:44 in the Alfa Berlina, a full nine seconds quicker than Ben Colburn in the sister Westbourne Racing Alfa. The smiles on everyone’s faces as they slithered through the muck suggested that the timing didn’t really matter, as the fun factor was high regardless.

At the finish, Wesley Berloo and Geert Verdonckt’s tremendous performance on the last regularity had catapulted them to the top of the leaderboard, winning the event by 29 seconds from Christine Pearson and Mark Lillington in second place, and Gavin and Ann Crawford in third. The winners didn’t have too much time to comment, with the Belgian pair needing to rush off to catch a ferry, but Geert did remark that, “This is very special for us and feels great. It was a joy to come here,” before our winners made a speedy departure to the south coast.

Mark Lillington is a name that is no stranger to many of us, but driver Christine Pearson was certainly pleased with her efforts in the driving seat: “I’m really happy, we weren’t expecting second. It all seemed to go nice and smoothly.”

Our third-place finishers were perhaps the most effusive with enthusiasm, with both Gavin and Ann bubbling with excitement at the finish, saying, “It was fantastic, we’re astounded and really proud of ourselves. So pleased it all came together and worked, it all seems to have fallen into place. We did the novice last year and then tried a harder event and came dead last, so we came back for another attempt.”

The stories and enthusiasm of our podium sitters were reciprocated amongst all of the competitors, whether they were returning home with a trophy or not. A Novice Trial may not be the most exciting or attention-grabbing event in the world, but its importance is firmly established, and we hope that we see all of this year’s graduates out in their cars again soon. They will all be very welcome when we do.