The Hand Goes Up

Probably the most basic and least expensive form of motor sport is what is known in the U.K. as the Sporting Trial. Here in Ireland we rather more colourfully call it the Mud Plug.
The idea is both basic and simple. Take the muddiest most awful and impossible piece of ground, an old quarry will do just fine as it's likely to be peppered with pools and quagmires. Mark out several utterly impossible looking courses and ask the drivers to complete them. The idea is that you start between two posts marked as 10 and progress through mud and standing water and over rocks until you either make contact with a marker post or stall or reach the final pair of posts which are marked as Zero. You score whatever was on the last pair of posts you successfully negotiated.
Then you drive off to the next test and complete a series of between 6 and 10 before lunch before repeating the entire process before heading off to the nearest hostelry for results and prizegiving. The winner is the one with the lowest score for the day and believe me you would need to be thinking of a big zero for the day to be anywhere near the top of the leaderboard at the end of the day.
The cars, as you can see are all specially built, mostly with large motorcycle engines. Harleys, Suzukis, Hondas and Yamahas seem to be the favourites although I saw an assortment of VW and Opel car engines too.
If you look at my Blipfolio you will see an odd assortment. If you notice 3 levers in the cockpits, you may well be mystified. There will be one for each back wheel so that each can be locked independently of the other and the car literally rotated around that wheel. The third lever will operate the differential.
Someone should seriously think about adapting this technology for city cars. Nothing on four wheels is as nifty as these. They will turn a circle in not much more than their own length. Parking made easy.
All a far cry from my days in the sport back in the 60's when we all used ancient engines, the favoured one being the 1172cc side valve Ford. Boy did I enjoy the day and even managed to shoot nearly 200 shots.
Oh, nearly forgot. This is also the slowest form of motorsport in the world. It's all about accuracy and technique and most of the time you can walk alongside a competing car and sometimes even have a chat with the driver if he isn't concentrating too hard.
Ps. The hand is up from an official to indicate that even though this driver has reached the "finish line", he has incurred a fault further back in the test.