Roger Clark at peak of his powers: 1972 RAC Rally win that sparked Escort era

Everything was in place. The pressure was on.

“It was a major stepping-stone,” says Mason. “I was very conscious of that and didn’t treat it lightly. But our close friendship eliminated worries of any sort.

“I knew Roger from competing against him and Jim on British events. We had hit it off – i.e. we liked a pint now and again – and I became a family friend.

“He didn’t tolerate fools and was selective in his friendships. But we had a similar sense of humour. A rapport, I suppose.

“If you are in a car together for a week you have to get on. Jim was quite reticent and couldn’t be more different from me. And yet. Stuart Turner was very astute.

“Our rally went like clockwork. Though not to plan: we hadn’t planned to be leading so soon.”

Clark grabbed the lead on the notoriously fickle spectator stages on the opening day and – bar a burst of speed by Fiat’s Håkan Lindberg in north Wales – held the lead thereafter.

The other three works Escorts were out before halfway and only Saab’s Stig Blomqvist, the winner in 1971, could hold a candle to the runaway Brit.

“You could feel Roger’s skill,” says Mason. “Sometimes during a stage I would look at his face and see how controlled he was. That was his home. He enjoyed being behind the wheel.

“He never acknowledged that he knew any of the forestry. Even if we had gone past his back garden I don’t think he would have recognised it or talked about it.

“I was very aware of driving Britain’s best rally driver but Roger just nodded off”

“Now and again I would give an exclamation if I had a note in my roadbook: a severe bend or well-known crashing point. But he didn’t need it. You just felt he was a machine.

“But I did do 70% of the road driving.

“Stuart had sent me to Jim Russell’s racing driver school at Mallory Park. I went every Saturday morning for about two months having stayed overnight at Roger’s. I got this certificate saying that I was premium grade, top class, or whatever. Roger thought that was very funny.

“But it helps being able to see things from both seats. I know what drivers want. And what they don’t want is a clever arse trying to show how good he is. I was very aware of driving Britain’s best rally driver – but Roger just nodded off. You couldn’t stop him. He’d wait until a stage start before swapping seats again.

“We knew we were leading and that the whole country was with us but it didn’t go to Roger’s head. He just tuned his mind to that marshal’s flag, and off we went. And that was it.

“Immediately after a stage I’d be checking my times and fiddling about, and there he’d be, stood waiting to get back into the passenger seat. He enjoyed the relaxation.”

A half-spin at Donington Park and a fuelling issue in Yorkshire cured by plumbing the spare pump to run in parallel were their only problems until a junction arrow went AWOL with just nine stages to go.

“Suddenly I was completely lost,” says Mason. “The maps of the forests of western Scotland are not well defined.

“You can imagine my feelings. A disaster.

“Roger didn’t show anger. Didn’t swear. He was just very, very quiet. I could hear him breathing heavily. I was frantically worried as we sat there. First on the road. Very lonely.

“Then other cars began appearing and doing handbrake turns. I realised then that the stage would be scrubbed.”

Bar a failing front wheel-bearing – sensed by Mason and repaired by cannibalising team-mate Andrew Cowan’s shadowing Escort – on the final road section to York, the job was done.

Mason: “As we went up the finish ramp Roger said, ‘That’ll show Stuart.’ There was an element of sticking two fingers up. Stuart was very pro-Finn and Roger resented that slightly, felt that he wasn’t being given the opportunities that they were receiving.”

Turner’s viewpoint was understandable given that Nordic drivers filled the next 14 places – and had won every RAC since 1960 – but so was Clark’s.

Not a great deal changed in the next four years. Clark had added two more British titles – though he was upstaged in 1976 by Ford’s latest Finnish sensation Ari Vatanen – and Mason had guided him to second places in the RACs of 1973 and 1975.

“I had to keep up with him in the bar. He seemed to drive even better with a hangover”

What was new was that the BDA now sat in the boxier shell of the Mk2 Escort – and there was a new face in the co-driver’s seat.

Mason had been uncomfortable with the South African way of doing things on the 1974 Total International Rally – a rare overseas outing for Clark – and so Pegg replaced him for the 1975 event, to victorious effect.

“It took me about a millisecond to say yes,” says Pegg, who at the time was working in The City of London. “Roger was very impressive. The flow was unbelievable. He was good fun to be with, too, and we got on well.

“The only thing is that I had to keep up with him in the bar. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him. He seemed to drive even better with a hangover.”

Pegg, who had won that year’s South African title alongside Jan Hettema, found himself in a strange world of maps and arrows on the 1976 RAC.

“Those were real rallies, weren’t they,” he says. “Make no mistake, the service planning was very complex. Those OS maps are wonderful. But I had set up a service point which [Ford team co-ordinator] Charles Reynolds pointed out ‘is now in the middle of Kielder Water.’

“People were telling me that the more experienced co-drivers used marked maps even though they weren’t supposed to. I never worried about the inspections because we never had them. I read the map on the Great Orme stage, but I think Roger knew it better than I was reading it.

“With my inexperience of the spectator stages, I was getting a bit frustrated that we weren’t winning from day one. Roger’s, however, was a very considered approach.

“He was very chilled. Quite a few co-drivers drove on the road sections and we’d get involved in little dices. The minute the revs started going up, Roger would open an eye and say, ‘Slow down.’

“It was the most amazing car: incredible balance. And when that BDA was sucking at full throttle – wow! An unbelievable sound.

“We went exceptionally well in Wales and were in second place behind Pentti Airikkala, who was driving an Escort prepared and run by David Sutton’s [satellite] team. There was a delay at a stage at about 3am and some guy stuck his head in through the window and said, ‘C’mon boy, you can’t let this foreign f***er beat you!’”

The dice, however, had turned on a timing error just prior to that final loop through Wales: Airikkala had booked out of the Weston-super-Mare TC one minute over maximum lateness and therefore was running under notice of an appeal against disqualification.

Not that an official appeal was ever forthcoming. A hasty decision to adjust rather than replace a recalcitrant clutch backfired and Airikkala retired with four stages remaining.

“Rules are rules,” says Pegg. “And Roger understood the situation perfectly.

“Plus you have got to have some luck some time on events like that. We had one major drama – at the end of quite a long stage up north somewhere: the front-right strut became unbolted and collapsed. We went through the flying finish with its wheel dragging under the car.

“Fortunately, we had a floating service team at the end of the stage and were able to sort the problem.

“Had it had happened anywhere else…

“Roger didn’t have huge mood swings, from depression to ecstasy. He was just doing a job and doing it very well. He achieved what he expected of himself.

“He was obviously happy, though, and we had a great party to celebrate. I went to the bed in the middle of it. Came back down the next morning, and all the Swedish guys were still drinking.”