I MAY be in danger of showing my age here, but back in the day I covered a lot of rallying for this newspaper and I have lots of wonderful memories of that time. Of course the mid-eighties was a period of what might be termed ‘rallying in extremis’ for it was of course the wild and very dangerous era of Group B cars which was ultimately banned in the wake of the deaths of such stars as Henri Toivonen and Attilio Bettega.

The Irish crew of Kris Meeke and Paul Nagle (Peugeot 207 S2000) were in sensational form on today's opening leg of the Rally Internacional de Curitiba in Brazil.

THERE is a vast forest wilderness in the border country between England and Scotland — roughly half way between Hexham and Hawick — known as the Kielder complex and in rallying terms this bleak, barren unforgiving landscape is as central to the mythology of the sport as Monaco is to Grand Prix racing.