Rally Barbados regular Andrew Costin-Hurley was among more than 60 entries in the 'Legend Stars' category at last weekend’s (October 10-13) Rallylegend 2024 in San Marino. Ahead of his 20th trip to compete in the island next year, the British driver carried decals to promote BCIC RB25 prominently displayed on the front three-quarters of his unique Ford Puma Cosworth.
Subject to final ratification by the Barbados Motoring Federation (BMF), BCIC RB25 will run from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1. The Rally Show (May 24), where a display of every car entered is the focal point of a huge celebration of island rallying, and the final shakedown and seeding event, King of the Hill (May 25), fill the previous weekend.
The 22nd edition of Rallylegend marked 40 years since Stig Blomqvist won the World Rally Championship and 50 since the Lancia Stratos won the first of its hat-trick of WRC titles. With Blomqvist driving an Audi Sport quattro S1 and fellow World Champions Miki Biasion and Ari Vatanen also present, the event attracted tens of thousands of spectators from all over Europe to mingle with their heroes in the Rallylegend Village and watch nearly 200 cars over three and a half days of competitive rally action.
Experienced Indycar and Formula 1 engineer Costin-Hurley, wife Melissa – they got engaged during one of their island trips - and co-driver Rob Brook befriended crews from Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland, discussing Rally Barbados at every turn. Costin-Hurley says: “Rallylegend was phenomenal. It was an absolute privilege to be accepted into the Legend Stars class and be in the company of so many illustrious cars . . . and I met my all-time hero, Ari Vatanen.
“It was not only a spectacular rally, but a tremendous atmosphere with terrific Italian hospitality, food and drinks. As we have learned from Barbados, there is such a thrill of competing abroad, and we were honoured to be in such hallowed company.”
The rally started at night, with nearly half the event run in darkness and huge numbers of spectators lining the stages in the hills of San Marino, air horns and smoke flares aplenty. Just one page, 10 lines of co-driver Brook’s pace notes for one stage included six hairpins, two with chicanes, so it was a challenging event: “Some of the stages were similar in character to Barbados, but on steroids – and the altitude changes and inclusion of gravel tracks mid-stage made them feel very different.”
While fellow-Brit Martin Stockdale and Jamaica’s Jeff Panton have competed in Rally Barbados 22 and 20 times respectively, Costin-Hurley is unique in that he has campaigned the same car since his first visit in 2003. He believes the car to be unique, as the only turbocharged rear-wheel-drive Puma, and it certainly attracted a huge amount of attention from fans at Rallylegend, any Puma from that period being a rarity in mainland Europe.
He built it almost exclusively himself over 14 months ending in mid-2001 and admits to “enjoying building as much as driving”, evidenced by the weight loss and year-on-year improvements made to the car since then. The Puma shell has a 300bhp 2-litre Ford Sierra engine and running gear, with Escort WRC suspension front and rear.
While the car is the same, Costin-Hurley had had nine different co-drivers in Barbados. The first was Cars & Car Conversions Deputy Editor New Zealander Carlin Gerbich, although their 2003 outing ended off the road in Kendal after Costin-Hurley’s first experience of rain in the island. With eight appearances since 2011, his most consistent partner has been Brook, who had previously sat with four other British drivers and entered his own Peugeot 205 GTi as a driver in 2005, with father John as co-driver.
As the Puma is a hybrid – not in the same way as the Puma Rally1 driven to victory in Rallylegend by M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux – it has always run in the island’s Group B, so not eligible for overall position. There have been some trophies along the way, though, including five class wins, only three DNFs and a best (theoretical) overall finish of 20th in RB14, when the Puma’s GpB2 win came against four class opponents.
BCIC Event Director Neil Barnard said: “I really want to thank Andrew and Melissa for agreeing to promote BCIC Rally Barbados at Rallylegend. Andrew and Melissa have become such an integral part of our Rally Barbados family and we are really looking forward to their 20th (!) visit next year”.
Rally Barbados is a tarmac rally, with around 20 special stages run on the island’s intricate network of public roads, under road closure orders granted by the Ministry of Transport & Works; the previous Sunday’s King of the Hill ‘shakedown’, run under a similar arrangement, features four timed runs on a roughly four-kilometre stage, the results of which are used to seed the running order for the main event.
