The Bulldog spirit on show in Wales

Just when last week's Bulldog International Rally of North Wales couldn't get any stranger, a genuine Hollywood megastar strolled up to the start of Big Ray and sat on a log in front of me.

Fortunate as I am to travel the world to commentate on the best drivers on the planet's finest roads, I'm never more at home than when I'm in the middle of one of Britain's best-loved forest stages. Names like Grizedale, Eskdalemuir and Gale Rigg really harbor a whole load of memories. Last week, it was Dyfi. Out came OS sheet 124 and away we went.

I was hugely disappointed at missing out on watching two runs through Dyfnant on Friday night, but when you look at the decision to cancel the stages in terms of cold, hard cash, there was only ever going to be one outcome from the numerous meetings Wolverhampton and South Staffs Car Club had held earlier in the week.

Bumping into AUTOSPORT snapper Jakob Ebrey at the highest point of the Dyfi stage on Saturday, we discussed the loss of his opportunity for headlight-inspired art. Jake's take was bang on.

"At least they held their hands up and admitted they couldn't afford to do it," he rightly reasoned.

And he was absolutely right. How many times have we seen events stretch themselves in the past? Plenty. It would have been all-too easy for the organisers of the second round of the British Rally Championship to get caught up in the sporting side and commit to running the stages.

As you'd expect from what has been one of the most popular and best-run rallies in Britain, the Bulldog has a small financial buffer and it's possible the hit could have been taken for a Friday-night thrash through Dyfnant, but what happens if and when the margins are even tighter next year? The result would quite likely be the loss of the event. The rule of the head over the heart was absolutely right in this case.

Having lost two stages, with Friday night behind them, what the organisers really needed was a straightforward Saturday with no hold-ups and no problems. What they got was the polar opposite.

First off, one of the historic cars running ahead of the internationals crashed, causing a delay while the car was shifted. Then Alastair Fisher's Ford Fiesta caught fire on a road section costing more time. And then, two loops down with one - ironically including the only run through Dyfnant - to go, things got really tough; one of the challenge cars, also running ahead of the internationals spontaneously combusted on the run up to Dolgellau.

Alastair Fisher at flat-chat before his Fiesta caught fire on Saturday © LAT

When your luck's out, it's really out. And it was totally out for the Bulldog organisers last week. The second car to catch fire on the event did so at the top of Dinas Mawddwy. For those of you who don't know, this is quite a big mountain, over which the A470 runs. And the A470 is quite a big road - in Welsh terms - going from the top to the bottom of the principality. And burning car #74 closed it on Saturday afternoon.

And the rally ground to a halt. Unbelievable.

Waiting in the woods in Penllyn, word spread: we wouldn't be seeing any rally cars in this stage.

A quick mental calculation meant a dash to Dyfnant was on. On it might have been, but a couple of calls confirmed it would be pointless. The Bulldog was done for the day, at just over half distance.

Stopping in Welshpool, I pondered a chat with rally manager Kevin Witton, but decided against it. Witton and his team were run ragged. The last thing they needed was an interfering hack pestering them for reasons why this had been the toughest day of their rally-running career. And how they felt about it.

I left them alone. And left Wales.

The drive home left me with plenty of time to ponder a classic cut short. A decade ago, as a great final round of the national championship, this event came in two parts, a National A and a National B. The National B cars ran a shorter route following behind the main field. And everything worked well.

Two and a half decades ago, then known as the Audi Sport Rally, the organisers ran one event. And everybody came. Everybody, including Timo Salonen and the factory Mazda Rally Team Europe and Colin McRae in one of his first outings in a pukka, factory Ford Sierra RS Cosworth.

And everybody loved the event. And the rally rarely missed a beat.

Last week, the Bulldog organisers ran four events. Studying the combined timetable for those rallies and trying to figure out where to go and when to catch the best of the action was not easy. Not easy in the same way that launching Space Shuttle with jump leads, a cucumber and an empty stapler might be a bit testing.

The associated difficulties were graphically illustrated at the Aberangell end of the east-west white that dissects Dyfi. There's a junction that goes in four, maybe five, directions - I can't remember exactly. Realising I'd wrong slotted (again), I looked in the rear-view mirror to try to figure it out, only to see rally cars from two or three different events heading in three different directions at this junction. What chance did I stand?

If the retired crew that was waiting by the side of the road at said junction are reading this, that was me in the silver Volvo, frantically trying to look like I knew where I was going. I didn't.

Jarkko Nikara during the Bulldog rally © LAT

Running multiple rallies off one platform event is, all too often, the only workable business model for events at this level. And it's a real shame. I'm all for a smaller, cheaper national event running off the back of the main event, but the scenario these events are forced into just to stay afloat is fraught with risks. And, this year, the Bulldog was bitten.

This issue is symptomatic of a wider problem in British rallying, one where the historic hierarchy of local events, to BTRDA to national to BRC, has somewhat disappeared. The BRC is trying to provide a complete ladder to success within its own framework and this is wrong. I appreciate that BRC manager Mark Taylor is simply trying to balance the books, but, as far as I can see, this policy continues to damage much-loved series and individual rallies at a lower level on the British scene.

Unfortunately, these issues are part of a far bigger picture, called the global economic downturn. And the plight of British rallying isn't exactly central to world leaders' efforts to right the fiscal wrongs instigated by a bunch of hooray hedge-funders on Wall Street.

Wall Street takes me back to America and back to Hollywood. Who, I hear you ask, was the man worth millions and watched by billions enjoying our sport on a sunny Saturday? Beneath the black hoodie and blacker shades was Rupert Grint, there to watch his brother James do his stuff.

And the Harry Potter star (Ron Weasley) should have been proud of his sibling. On his first outing in a Citroen DS3 R3 Grint turned in some hugely respectable stage times and collected 11th overall on his debut in the car.

Talking of respectable Citroen debuts, they don't come any more spectacularly respectable than that of Tom Cave. The 20-year-old scored the biggest win of his career just down the road from his Aberdovey home on Saturday.

It's easy to nod knowingly at local knowledge, but Cave's drive was about much more than that. He took on and beat some of the most talked about drivers on the British and world scene. Two-time BRC winner Keith Cronin was second (admittedly on his Citroen debut), while Jarko Nikkara (the class of the 2009 WRC Pirelli Star Driver programme) was third.

Nikara might have had a driveshaft problem late in the day, but his car was on-song second time through Dyfi Main when Cave kicked 10 seconds out of everybody.

Cave was a hugely deserving winner of the rally. And probably the only person not more than a bit disappointed at the Bulldog's early bath.

More importantly than all of that, he's the first full-on ginger to win a round of the British Rally Championship since 1993...