Myerscough host Hero Rally ‘Challenge Three’ event competitors

The weekend's Hero (‘Heritage Endurance Rallying Organisation’) Era Rally 'Challenge Three' event featured 70 classic cars from between 1936 and 1989, ranging from Alfas to Volkswagens. The event sees drivers competing against each other, but the cars must abide by the road traffic laws and the onus is on accurate navigation.

74 rally crews headed to Myerscough’s main Bilsborrow campus, where motorsport students were on hand helping to marshal and facilitate the scrutineering of the event.

The College boasts a rally heritage having a long-established motorsport department with stage rallying a core element of their activities and a number of lecturers having strong links to the sport. It has long established links with a number of Lancashire based Motor Clubs who have been instrumental in the organising of the event for many years.

Occasions like this give Myerscough students crucial real life experience on events and such experience looks great on their CV when they apply for jobs within the industry.

Andrew Fletcher, Assistant Head of Motorsport, reflected on the start to the new academic year.

“We are very active here. We organise the events that we need to go on. We’ve been to Germany with the electric championship, then there has been work on the British Rally Championship as well,’’ he said.

“We are seeing great results with our students. Between lecturers and students, we build cars and hire some of them out. Every car that we hire out we go with it with a team of students as well. The tutors or myself are with them, we camp and work on the cars, we get soaking wet and freezing cold but that’s just rallying in in the UK.’’

Lecturer Richie Harrison added: “We cover everything from basic routine maintenance through to things like stripping engines down, building them back up, we take them out on events. And that’s the one thing we do differently is that we treat them as race technicians, rather than just mechanics plus the customer-facing side of it as well.

“The qualification that they come out with allows them to do that, but with the skills within our staff, it allows us to use all that experience to put more of them into the sport through our own passions, hobbies and experience over the years.

“Certainly the group size this year is a little bit bigger. We’re getting a lot of investment through from various avenues within the college. It’s really good.

“The students are moving and progressing, we’ve got students currently working with McLaren.

‘’We’ve got students that are going on into the rally world who we’ve got our links with them in sports so we’ve got a lot of different pathways. Alongside that we’ve got we’ve got guys going out into the British Superbike Championship, I’m involved with a team out there that we’ve been working with all year, and we are also taking the students with us.

“Some of them have been asked to stay on with the team. And so, it’s pretty good at the minute. We’ve got lots of networking avenues and pathways that the students can benefit from.”

Motorsport student Dillon Weardon was on one of the students who assisted with the event, and said: ‘’This is one of the few colleges that offer this course there are people from all over the place here studying. It’s a huge catchment, you get all kinds of people from all different places. So, it’s good for diversity.

“At the end, I’m trying to move on inside race strategy and data analysis. Live performance analysis for racing teams. single-seater racing. Ideally, Formula One. Ultimately, I’m trying to be able to do data analysis and performance that is what I’m trying to get into.”

For more information on the range of motorsport study programmes available at Myerscough College and University Centre, CLICK HERE