Scrutineering took place on Saturday evening and the Escort passed through without any problems, allowing the Clive, myself and the team to chill out for the rest of the night. With 5 people in the support crew, including two mechanics, we had the biggest team out since the RAC… I know that might not seem such a big thing, especially as we’d only done one event since that rally, but it makes all the difference as it allows Clive and myself time to re-focus between stages and takes off a hell of a lot of pressure when it comes to checking everything is still bolted on and working! We’d made the decision to camp overnight no cut down on costs and whilst the weather remained dry and relatively warm and entertainment was provided by a television powered from Matt’s van, I think it’s probably something that we’ll avoid in future as nobody apart from Matt seemed to have the best of nights sleep… although maybe that had something to do with the night time conversations Matt has with himself…!
Saturday dawned bright and unfortunately very early. I was suffering as well, feeling nauseous and pretty sick – not what I needed before a day bouncing around in a Rally car! I’m not the best of people in the morning anyway and I rarely eat before the first stage as I’m not usually hungry first thing, but this was something else. We gave the car a final check over and changed the tyres from slicks to worn forest tyres after looking at what parts of the course we could see and speaking to other competitors and made our way to the start.
Sitting in the queue of cars waiting to enter the time control it was immediately obvious that something was not quite as it should be. We’d watched the first few cars nailing it along the straight past the flying finish but things had gone quiet and the cars in front of us seemed to have come to a standstill. We got out of the car and word filtered down that one of the cars further up the order had had a pretty heavy off. This is always a horrible moment for anybody involved as any information always seems to take ages to come through, but the length of the delay and the fact that the paramedics had were on the scene seemed to indicate that it was serious. Since the event we’ve found out that the driver was OK but the navigator suffered concussion, whiplash and had his internal organs shaken about a bit and was taken to hospital for treatment and a scan before being released. Another of the competitors reflected what I’ve always said – it’s always the navigator!
Once the stage was cleared things got moving again pretty quickly, which is a credit to the organisation of the team running the event. We blasted through the first stage in what seemed to be a very… composed… manner, considering the Escort usually has it’s arse hanging out at every opportunity! As we came up to the finish Clive said that the car felt massively down on power and that even with his foot flat to the floor he didn’t seem to have the grunt that he know the car was capable of. We pulled into the service area and got out of the car and the crew set to work checking it over.
Stage 2 was a re-run of the first stage and again we seemed to be down on power. The car was just not pulling as it should be and our lap times reflected this – over the first two stages we were slower than cars that we should have been beating and over two minutes a stage down on the leaders. We pulled into service at the end of the stage and the problem was quickly diagnosed – one of the carburettor mechanisms wasn’t working correctly and we were, in effect, only running on one carb. We knew that if we couldn’t sort this out it could be the end of the rally so Matt, Clive and Dave started work on trying to repair the fault, racing against the clock to get us out for stage 3 and finally closing the bonnet with minutes to go before we were due at the time control.
Things immediately began to look up as we booted it onto the first proper straight. “That’s much better” said Clive as he put his foot down and we tore down back straight. Stages 3 and 4 saw our pace pick up as Clive put the extra power to use and we moved from being one of the slowest cars to being one of the not quite as slow cars! If we’d taken the first two stages our of the equation we’d have been two placed higher in the final standings, but I suppose facing that kind of adversity is what rallying is about.
We pulled in at the end of stage 4 just as the heavens opened, which proved to be a Godsend as the heat had caused our radiator to boil over on stage 4 and we were desperate for cooler conditions to avoid big problems in the afternoon. It also proved to help dampen down the dust that had been a problem all morning when trying to follow another car on some of the looser areas.
For some reason on the first two stages after lunch we were just not on the pace. I don’t know whether it was because the layout just didn’t suit our car, whether there was something wrong mechanically or whether Clive didn’t get back into the groove as fast as he’d have like after a long break, but we just weren’t at the races. Cars that we had been much faster than at the end of the morning session were beating us and, looking back at the times and at how things felt in the car, I really cannot put my finger on why that was.
The final two stages of the day were the reverse of the first two in the morning session and Clive was caning it trying to catch a KA that, due to the confusing timing system used by the organising club, had somehow got in front of us. On both stages we were close behind it as we entered the final corner but were never quite fast enough to overtake it! If the stage had been miles longer I reckon we’d’ve had ‘im!
After sitting down and (literally) letting the dust settle, I think we can take a lot of positives from the event:
o We were once again hampered by a minor technical problem that affected our overall rally. Unless it happened early on the first stage, this was a problem that should have been spotted and sorted before the event but due to the car being stored at HT we were unable to give the car a shakedown that would have highlighted this problem. Some things you can’t plan for – rallying, especially on the sort of rough stages that this rally threw up – will always potentially shake or break something and there is a finite number of things that you can do beforehand to prevent this, we need to make sure that we’re getting the basics right however and ensure that the car is good to go before an event. On a positive note, apart from the carb and the overheating (which we’ll already planned to resolve by putting a new scoop into the bonnet), the car ran trouble free on some of the worst stages I’ve ever seen. Unlike in the woods where you come out of a rut onto dirt or gravel, we were bouncing out onto hard, sharp concrete, yet the car stood up to it well.
o Having a team to help out is fantastic and saves Clive and myself having to scrabble about
under the car. This is especially helpful for Clive, especially if you have someone who knows the mechanics of the car, as it means there’s more than one person who can try to work out what could be going wrong and how to fix it. On a the social side of things, it was a good laugh having a few of us there having a bit of banter both before and during the rally (despite the fact that between stages I could usually be found laid down feeling ill!)o When we were fast, we were very, very, fast. When we were slow we were rubbish! The first two stages we know about. I wish I knew why we weren’t as fast on SS4 and SS5.
o It was the first time the car and Clive and myself had been out in these roles since November and we seemed to settle back into the groove pretty quickly. Despite feeling like I was going to chunder several times I avoided it as the stages weren’t all that technical there wasn’t too much for me to do. Clive drove a nice clean rally and just about avoided 360’ing it! There were a few corners that we were a bit iffy on here and there but I think that will always be the case if you’re on the edge, yet we got round each time without anything too dramatic happening… I think Matt Rudd may have been on the brink of having kittens on one corner when we ran a bit wide though!
o Single venues are fun, but Driffield is far to rough and we’ll probably give it a miss until some work is done to rectify this. Whilst the worst part of the Thor Hammer was not used on this event, we felt that it had been a little misrepresented by the organisers. It was bloody harsh on the stages and I think we were battered about worse than any rally we’ve competed in. It wasn’t smooth concrete – it was horrible and potholed and even when you stuck to the side of the road advised by the organisers it still bounced you to buggery. There was also a lot of confusion caused by the timing system used by the organisers. Most single venues give you a checking in time for the next stage at the end of the previous stage. On this event they decided to use the system used on multi venue rallies. This meant that you took your finish time for the last stage and added x minutes to this time to get your arrival time for the next stage. This was fine in principle but a lot of the competitors either had not used this method or weren’t expecting it. This led to us being penalised (later revoked) for clocking into a time control early when I had not stuck with my own convictions and had listened to another more experiences navi who told me that I was due in at one time when in fact I was due in a minute later. I’m not sure why the decision was made to use this timing method but I wasn’t convinced that was appropriate for a SV event and I think the method of giving a competitor a start time for the next stage allows for much greater flexibility for the organisers. I don’t know what happened towards the end of the rally but we were sat in front of the time control waiting for our check in time and cars that were behind us we checking in and we ended up being waved up to the time control.
o Camping is fun. Hotels are better. Preferably at least 4 star with a Bar and Spa.
Many thanks to: Our Team – Stu, Matt, Paul, Jack and Antony; The Organisers – Beverley and District MC; The Photog – Matt Rudd matthewruddphotography.co.uk; The Helpers: the Marshals, the Medics and everyone who helps us go out and play! The Competitors: We’d have been first without you!
All Photographs courtesy of Matt Rudd Photography: www.matthewruddphotography.co.uk
