Skoda Rally Blog

Well, that was interesting. Started out early, just to make sure all was well, and the car is a bit of a bitch to start in the mornings, so I felt it was a good idea to take plenty of time to make sure. But it actually started up easily, and we made the last few checks, and then loafed around for an hour or so, before setting off at 9:35 for the first 5 stages of the day. And they were OK – first up was Stapehill (or Uddens to us locals), and that was the first gravel stage. It was a bit rutted in places already, but we had a reasonable pass at it (or so I thought, anyway, until seeing the times), and then onto Ashley Heath, which was a bit more rutted and dodgy – the gravel parts were OK, but when you get onto the black, loamy soil that makes up a lot of this area, then it’s a nightmare, as you’re just sucked into the ruts that the previous 100 cars have left, and there’s little I can do about the direction of the car – it can get a bit skittish at times when you’re doing 70 on that sort of surface. On the gravel, things are fine, though. Some of the corners were already super-rutted, and we were skidding along on the sump-guard already!

Next up was SS5, Mount Ararat, which was 10.6 miles long, and a real test of endurance. It’s not too rough though, just suffering from some rutted corners in places, so it wasn’t too bad. We saw the Nova that was leading the class at the side of the road here. Turns out that he ran out of fuel as his chase car couldn’t find him between SS4 and SS5! Oh dear. And then it was onto Somerley, where there are plenty of spectators – when you come out of the forest and see the house, it’s a bit like one of the stages on Colin McRae 2005 on the UK rally. And I think I had a bit of an Xbox moment as Kev said I started showing off! It was on tarmac there though, so that’s much easier to go mad on.

And then SS7, Hurn. This is just up the road from here, and somewhere I drove on many years ago. But there were some HUGE potholes – about a foot deep, and probably four feet by three, right after a crest, so you hit them without any chance of doing anything about it. It was right before a hairpin, and the car was all over the place, and I thought it had broken something as it wasn’t steering properly, but that was just all the dirt we were ploughing through. After that, it was OK, although again getting super-rutted near any corners or chicanes. But it was time to go back to service, and put some fuel in the car – everything else seemed fine, so we left it as it was.

On to the three Wareham stages next, which were renowned for being rough. And they certainly were that. SS8 wasn’t too bad, but there were the same problems with the black soil and rutting at corners, but I went flat out for the flying finish, and had a really scary moment – there was a bad bump there, and the car took off, and when we landed it ended up drifting off to the right – there was a 15-foot wide strip of grass, and then some trees. We were doing about 70 at this point, and heading for the trees. I steered the other way, but of course the back went out towards the trees, so I just steered into it, and hoped for the best. It seemed to take an age (although watching the video it’s over in a couple of seconds), and I was convinced we were going over, but somehow the car righted itself and I got us back on the track. And apologised a lot! The marshals at the end said it looked ‘interesting’.

SS9 was hideously rough – the tracks were all soft, and we spent most of it on the sumpguard. When you go down a track like this, you see two wheel-tracks, and in the middle a polished section of earth that’s perfectly flat where people’s sumpguards have been running on it – it looks like someone has plastered it! Very slow through here, and the next stage too, which was similar, and quite boggy in places. Back to service for some more fuel, and then off again!

Somerley 2 was next up, and this was similar to 1, except in reverse. Again, a chance to go a bit madder on the tarmac in front of the spectators, although I’m sure it was a bit of an anti-climax after the preceding 80 or so cars left running. There are some long straights here that take lots of bottle. Something that I clearly lack as doing 80 here was more than enough for me.

White Sheet was next up, which was SS3 in reverse, and good fun this time round – no black soil, and lots of ditches to try to take advantage of when cornering. It’s pretty rutted here too, but nowhere near as bad as Wareham.

By this time, we’d seen the results sheets, and knew that there was no point in going mental. We were well beaten, and a finish was the best we could do. And it was Hurn 2 this time. I didn’t think we went that much slower, but in fact we were 20 seconds down on the first run, which I’m gutted about now.

Back to service for a last time, and then off to SS14 – Plumley Wood, which was SS5 in reverse. Unfortunately here because of two others’ errors, we were in front of them. And during the 10 miles of this stage, both of them caught us, and the car starting running badly as well. I was frankly gutted, as seeing the way the guys shot off, and went round corners like men possessed showed me that I’m not cut out for this.

We got to the start of SS15 and I had a couple of minutes, so I took a look under the bonnet, and found that the reason for the poor running was that the air temperature sensor bracket had broken, meaning it was reading as if the air was incredibly cold (due to the bracket providing the earth connection). Into the boot, I cable-tied it in place, and it made the car run OK! Good news, at last. So into Ebblake, and this wasn’t too bad, although it was getting dark now, and that meant it was harder to see the surface changes – it was possible to end up on the nasty black stuff without realising it, which made for some scary moments, although it wasn’t as bad as earlier. Again, we were slower than the first run, though, although I think the massive rutting in a couple of sections may have contributed to that….

Finally, SS16, Somerley 3, which was a rull run of Somerley 1, but in reverse. And that was good fun. Again we had a car behind, but they didn’t catch us this time, and it was SO rough I could hardly believe it – the tracks were really cut up, and there were lots of stutter bumps where people’s braking had caused the gravel to form a washboard. Nasty to drive over, for sure. But we finished it.

Except we hadn’t, yet. We needed to get back to Bournemouth Town Hall Annexe to get a final time, and then into the Square. We got to the Town Hall OK, and got our time, and then sat in a queue down Richmond Hill for 20 minutes or so while each car went over the finish ramp and was interviewed by Robin, who is a star – a total natural on the mic. In this time, we had about 10 boys come up and ask for our autographs! I didn’t have the heart to tell them, I just signed away anyway. I was surprised that there were still people waiting there, and interested in what had gone on, even for us as last but one through. All good stuff, and nice to know that we finished it.

But we finished 67th in the end, from 92 starters. After SS3 we were in last place all day. At the risk of doing a Sinatra, I’m really not sure I’m cut out for driving in the forests. I can at least control the car, and get round a corner OK, but I’m way off the pace. We were being beaten clearly by a totally standard Favorit – not just edged here and there, but utterly trashed. I get to a certain speed on a track, and then I back off, ‘cos frankly I’m crapping myself. When the car goes light at 70 or so, and it gets twitchy, then I’m just thinking “crash”, and that’s clearly not how a real rally driver thinks. And after finishing the rally last night, I felt really depressed. Don’t get me wrong, I was never expecting to come anywhere, but I wasn’t expecting to be so slow and crap myself whenever we got going. We’re not talking Newton Abbot Audi here – that was totally different, utter fear. But this was reaching my natural “that’s fast enough” limit. I brake too early, and generally don’t give it enough to make the grade as far as I’m concerned. I’d be happy if I felt I could drive well enough to get to the finish in a reasonable time, but the only time I really went for it (apart from Friday night) nearly ended in disaster. I guess I’ll have to think about it for a couple of days.

Well, it is upon me. Today was the most intense thing I have done in a long time. If not ever! There was all the usual stuff of getting the car scrutineered, last minute modifications and so on, but on top of that a radio interview (having been on Meridian TV briefly the night before after the shakedown stage, which went well), and much frivolity. But as the day wore on, the reality of the situation, that I was taking part in the Rallye Sunseeker, and starting the cars off too, was meaning that I was more and more excited as the time got nearer. Our out time was 6:31, but at about 6pm the car wouldn’t start. The live feed for the ECU is a bit dodgy on the car, and it’s a nightmare trying to find out why – it only ever seems to happen when starting the car, as once it’s running it’s OK. But it wouldn’t start and there was some considerable panic as I tried to find the problem, but we traced it to a loose connection that I can work on. I saw months of work evaporating for a few minutes, but all was well once we got it running again – we got to MC1 and were away. The drive to Bournemouth seemed to take an age, but we got there early, and had to do an interview for the radio station again, which was broadcast on the ‘net – I know this because my Sister heard it in the USA, as did my brother-in-law who got his mates at work to listen too! It’s all quite a laugh, really. Saw some friends down at the start line, which kinda put me off the ball for a few seconds, and then it was time to start. The car wasn’t happy at being left to tick over for so long, and took a bit of getting going again, but then we were off!

Took everything pretty cautiously, as I didn’t want to wreck the car or look a total tool. It went OK, although the car stalled at the end of the stage and took some time to get started again, and this meant we were in a bit of a rush to get round for SS2, but we got there, and realised that the camera wasn’t working (the safety strap knocked the battery out of place, which sucked, but got that fixed, and also raised the tickover so the car would keep going, as being very hot meant it was getting lumpy). SS2’s start was a debacle – there were timecard issues which were not resolved as it was 30 second starts, and the marshals weren’t quite ready as we were the first people to do SS2. So we had a bit of a dodgy start with no time to prepare, but got going and I was pretty angry so I drove harder than before – we really banged the sumpguard when we came to the pier approach, and I was really giving it some beans on the seafront. We did 1:51, which wasn’t quick compared to everyone else, but I was happy with it. Until we were given 2:21, because the timesheet was wrong, and we needed to go back to Rally HQ afterwards to put in a query. From the looks of the website this has now been resolved, so we’re not last – we’ve got two cars behind us, another Favorit, and a Proton in N1. So that’s not bad at all. Bring on the forests, that’s what I reckon.