Rally car racing in a 1969 French automobile with two grandparents

Driver Geoff Boyd, 72, and his navigator, Gwyn Mulholland, 78, who had been analysing the track sheet with highlighter in hand, prepared for the Sapphire Coast Sporting Car Club's 51st Bega Valley Rally.

"We're not going to win, but we may embarrass a few people," Boyd said with a laugh as he stood alongside his car of choice, a 55-year-old Peugeot 404, painted like a pack of gum.

Even though rain was expected to halt the amount of dust formed from the tyres of 63 competitors, the wet weather managed to create a few new obstacles. But nothing these two veteran challengers were too worried about.

Mulholland had petrol running through his veins both in the navigator's seat and the driver's position, like his father before him, his sons after him, and his siblings alongside.

During his career, he won the Sports Foyer NSW Community Sports Awards' prestigious Distinguished Long Service Award, the 2WD title in the 2005 NSW Rally Championship, and was a life member of Bathurst Light Car Club.

The 78-year-old had also worked as a flag marshal, stage commander, event director, competitor relations officer, Clerk of Course, manned SOS points, and driver coach accreditation of Motorsport.

"We had a not-trouble-free run, we had the alternator go out about halfway through the first section, we had intermittent charge getting to the battery, and we kept on going and continued through all the stages," Mulholland said of the weekend's rally around Eden and Bega.

"It was a fairly simple and easy repair because it was actually accessible, and that got us going, and then we went out and the alternator light came on. We got into service and it turned out we could bodge it up with cable ties to make sure it stayed there."

Mulholland said they were never up the front, lost eight minutes of race time repairing the issues, and further time when another car bogged itself in a creek, which he said could completely wreck a rally when you lose minutes.

"So what you do is put in an incident report and try and get that time back, now the benefit of RallySafe which is the timing device that was being used is that they can check on their machine how long you were actually stopped for and reward that back to you," he said.

Knowing Boyd since the early 70s when he was still a crazy "Peugeot man", Mulholland said he was invited to navigate for his longtime friend, and jumped at it, but suggested young drivers be wary of personality clashes.

"There are people that want to be rally drivers, they get a navigator or get partners in the car, but that often ends with written off, or navigator-partner splits.

"We only had a couple of yells at each other on the weekend, but we're doing alright," he said.

"We were going as fast through the corners as any of them, but we were laughing in the car because we couldn't go any quicker, and needed the speed to go up the next hill."

Even though they weren't the fastest rally team of the 66 competitors, their car still successfully finished all the stages, which resulted in them placing 36^th.