Skoda Rally Blog

Ian arrived around 2, which was handy as we were just about to go shopping again. Once pleasantries were exchanged, we got everything sorted and decided to take Ian to the service park. While I wouldn’t say I was jaded about the whole WRC experience, it’s obviously a totally new box of frogs for Ian, and he was keen to get down there, so we stickered his car up and then set off down there. Unfortunately most of the ‘big boys’ had already gone (aside from those who had hurt their cars on the shakedown, I guess – Henning Solberg’s car seemed to be needing a fair bit of work), but he was still excited about it all, and Paul must have got pulled in as he bought a Rally GB fleece. I settled with a free copy of Motorports News, with a bit about us, which said our budget was less than the Subaru drinks bill (almost certainly true) and that I was “the ultimate privateer”. While I’m sure there are others who could rightfully take that crown, I’ll definitely quote it again!

A quick trip to Sainsbury’s for the food for the weekend and it was just about time to set off for the ceremonial start. This means a 50-mile drive to Cardiff, a bunch of rally cars in the town centre, and driving over a ramp, and then coming back. Which I wasn’t that excited about this year because I was absolutely knackered – the last couple of days had caught up with me – but obviously this would pass, especially after some food and a bit of chocolate, which kicked in on the M4 while we sat in traffic. There was a lot worse to come – the way into Cardiff was choc-a-block, and it took ages to get in there; we’d planned to get there for 6pm so we could see Loeb et al, but we actually got there at 6:41, precisely the time we needed to do to avoid a ?500 fine for being late. Many arrived after us, so I guess they’ll be out of pocket….

Then, the long wait for the start – there were FAR more cars there than should have been when we arrived, and the queue took a long time to move. In that time it was a chance to catch up with a few old faces and have a chat, and also see my friend Juliet who’d brought her two nephews and niece down which was nice to have a little fan club. The rain started coming down quite heavily for a bit, but overall the weather wasn’t too bad given that it’s nearly Christmas and we were in Wales. After what seemed like a long time we got to the start line, and then up onto the ramp. What amazed me was how many people seem to have been reading this blog. I originally started it to keep my sister and her husband up-to-date on what I’d been up to, and it seems that loads of people now read it – it was mentioned on the start line over the PA, and it just seems plain odd that people I’ve never met read this and keep up with it, but there you go. I’d like to thank anyone who has read this and enjoyed it, anyway, I don’t want it to turn into an Oscar speech, it’s just nice that people take some interest, and I guess see a bit more inside what happens when some idiot from Bournemouth decides to play at being a rally driver.

We were then off, down the ramp and out, except, of course, we hadn’t done our belts up so we stopped around the corner and were mobbed by some 12-year-old boys who wanted autographs. Now, when this first happened (on the second time we did the Sunseeker) I said “Oh, don’t be silly”, but now I just sign them. Not ‘cos I think I’m famous or anything, but if that’s what they want, then cool. Maybe one day they’ll do whatever rally is on in the future, and they’ll say “well, that bloke in the Skoda did it”, in the same way the people in the Beetle doing the RAC was my inspiration.

The drive back to Swansea was punctuated by Paul getting Bulletin 3 (handy having the Internet on his phone), which now shows that tomorrow’s route has been severely revised; SS1/4 (Hafren) was originally 19km, it’s now down to 3km. SS2/5 (Sweet Lamb) is down to 4k from 6k, and SS3/6 (Myherin) is down from 35km to 18km. These are MAJOR reductions, and mean major changes – Paul is reworking the paperwork as I type this, as we have to work out where the new starts are (some are given as distances from junction numbers which we would have noted on the recce). This means a revised schedule, and thankfully also means more sane average speeds are needed (particularly on Hafren which was the one I was really worried about as a 62kph average speed in those conditions seemed borderline as we usually average only 75kph on a good day). I can’t help but feel that this will have repercussions, but it has been stressed that this was taken for safety of the competing crews, which means that rescue access was probably impossible. However, we did do the whole stages on recce, and given that (a) I have to pay for and do ANY repairs on the car and (b) Clair said she wouldn’t be happy if I killed Paul I was prepared to drive them as quickly as I found to be safe, rather than with abandon. Not that I’m crazy, I’m just a normal bloke who wanted to go rallying, but I went OK the other day when the stages were good.

So, there’s a lot to be done before tomorrow, but I really, REALLY need to get a good night’s sleep – I’m very tired, and this isn’t a good way to start any event. We have a 150km road section and our start time is 07:41. There is one upside to tonights trek to Cardiff and back – at a constant 50mph (didn’t see any point in tanking the car), it did the 100 miles on 14.5L of fuel, which is 31mpg. Looks like the mapping on part throttle we did will pay off, as the road sections will at least be doable without too many refills (it was doing around 10mpg before). Not sure about the stage consumption, but we’ll worry about that tomorrow. Although calculating it from a 3k stage will be hard. Let’s hope it’s all thawed out up there anyway.