Skoda Rally Blog

Today has been rather odd; normally when the Sunseeker is on, it happens during half term, so I have the day off and usually scrutineer early, and then loaf around all day, playing Dirt on the Xbox, etc.  But this year it’s not, and I went to work this morning, so I spent the morning teaching, and then came home, had a quick snack and then headed off to the service park to get noise tested.  The Seat started up without any issues, and noise was passed easily – a good 6dB under the limit – as the Ibiza is a quiet car.  Splendid, so just a drive to the BIC to meet with Paul and get through scrutineering.

Scrutineering is never my favourite part of an event, as it’s always the last thing that could stop you taking part, but generally on the Sunseeker it’s been a bit of an event with it mostly held at the Littledown centre, and this year at the BIC in the centre of Bournemouth.  On the way in there were a few photographers on the roundabout, and once booked in I met up with Paul, and we had a new experience – the marshals were applying the stickers.  This would save Paul from his least favourite job, and I left them to do it as they’d obviously had hours of practice already (scrutineering started at 10am and our time was 2:30) and it would be a pro job.  Paul and I always like to have a laugh, and unfortunately for those applying the stickers it was at them – there were more creases in them than in Shirley off Eastenders’ face.

A sticker which doubles as a contour map.

Spoke briefly to Rob Pike, the Clerk of the Course, and then saw Robin Bradford who commentates on the event who said he’d sent me an email and I’d not replied!  I didn’t get it, or a chance to speak to him as we were in to be scrutineered and he’d vanished by the time we got all done.

Our scrutineer was really nice – checked the car over and was chirpy while he did so, and we had a good time doing it which is a really nice change; usually it’s like standing outside the Headmaster’s office; this was much more like it.

Pleasant experience of scrutineering!

Once we’d done the scary Fire system test (which was the first time I’d done this, and he made me press the button!), it was all downhill from there, and we parked up and got all our paperwork in order.

All done!

Everything’s ready to go, we have to be at the ceremonial start at 18:07, and will apparently go over the start ramp at 19:23 but if it’s anything like last year we’ll be there a fair bit longer than that.  The weather is still quite warm at the moment, so hopefully it’ll stay that way and dry and everyone will have a good time down there tonight; if it’s anything like last year it will be ram packed!