Wales Rally GB 2007 – Day 3 – Recce 2

by Darren on Nov.29, 2007, under WRGB 07

WRGB 2007 Day 3 – Recce Day 2

Today’s schedule was a bit more demanding – first up, there was the only “new” stage of the event, Trawscoed (or “Trousers” in Paul-speak), which was run in reverse to last year’s stage, meaning a totally new set of notes was needed. The stage is around 40 miles away from where we’re staying, and opens at 7:30, meaning a 6:30 (or so) start to get there – when we arrived at 7:45, there was a reasonable queue, but we got going fairly quickly and made a full set of notes – the stage is around 30km long, and this meant around 25 pages of notes for us; the biggest contrast to last year’s notes was that I now call out more corners than before – whereas last year I might call something as 300, I may now say 100 1L 200 or similar, giving more information, but meaning more writing for Paul. The stage itself was strangely familiar (in the same way when you find part of a route you’ve driven before and realise where you are), but more than anything else, slippy. With a capital S! Make no mistake, there will be shenanigans on Sunday for whoever is still running – if the rain that’s been there all day keeps up until then, it will be as slick as hell, especially on the second run. Our second run was taken at higher speed, which went reasonably well – nothing too bad was wrong, just some re-calling of corners, mostly due to taking them slowly first time round because of traffic on the stage.

Next up, Brechfa, with an opportunity for a quick pic in the same place as last year….

The stage is a re-run of last year, but still a long stage, but one run was OK, taken at reasonable speed (and things must have improved since last year as I’ve had to be careful of the speed limit on most of the stages, whereas last year it was only on the long tarmac run on Epynt that it was a problem). This is a great stage, but again mega-slippy in places, and once more if we’re running on Sunday then we’ll have to be careful or it can get very messy very quickly. After seeing this and how the Loebs and Gronholms of this world go through there (and indeed most of the field), respect is due – I think this is one of the things that the TV coverage just doesn’t get across any more, especially as WRC cars look so “tame” – they don’t get out of shape despite going at amazing speed.

Now there was a long run to the two ‘Army’ stages – Epynt and Halfway, and after last year’s problems on recce (where someone had a problem after meeting Mikko Hirvonen coming the other way on the wrong side of the road) I was taking it very easy when going through the villages, and good job too – several of the top crews were coming round corners taking a couple of feet off of our side of the road, which could have been “interesting”. Anyway, we got to Epynt eventually (having run there with a couple of others who are way up the order), and set off round Epynt, which is quite an interesting stage as it combines fast, smooth gravel with a long tarmac road (where even we will hit 80+) and then a really twisty, hard, rocky section where a mistake could really cause trouble and the bottom of the car takes a lot of damage. The notes through this section weren’t quite right, so we re-ran it, and found out that…. they still weren’t right – odd as it went OK last year, but we’ve marked the dodgy bit and it can be done visually so it should be OK – the rest of the stage is fine. On, then, to Halfway, a stage that I loved last year, despite having 2 wheel changes AND bending the steering rack meaning the car was a nightmare to drive afterwards. And once more it didn’t disappoint – there were some minor changes to be made (more detail added and a few things removed), and again this is a stage of great contrasts – the gravel section then turns to a really ‘cresty’ section where an error will result in the rally being over (there are large rocks on the insides and outsides, so care is a pre-requisite), and then to a faster, more open section where a quick car would be fantastic, but any error would be punished severely. There was a small error, and I loved the stage, so we re-ran that as well, and didn’t quite fix the error, but it’s in a “visual” place, so no problems there. A great experience, Halfway, and I hope that the extra detail and cautions on the surface changes will mean we can get through without problems.

On, then, to Cardiff, which is an hour’s drive from Halfway, and we were reasonably up on our schedule, so we took the time to get a proper lunch (albeit late) and then to do the Millennium Stadium stage. Although this is the same as last year and indoors, I wanted to do it again but it did mean an hour’s queue to run it, with the Felicia sat amongst all the “proper” recce cars.

It was worth the wait – it turns out the layout isn’t identical (the position of the blocks is slightly different), but also the surface was wet so it was good to get an idea of the grip that’s there; last year we were all squeals, whereas this year it just slid nicely and quietly. We ran with an Evo on each run (two cars went together on each run, and you got to do your second run straight after the first), and although we clearly couldn’t have kept up, we didn’t get totally lost, and second time through Paul timed it and we did a fair job, which is good. Plus I made a promise to the two women who were marshalling the stage start that I’d see them on Saturday, so I hope not to break that promise as then we’d still be doing….

While in Cardiff, Paul went to the newsagent to get a copy of Motorsports News, to see the supplement with the paper on WRGB. And we’re featured in it – mostly because of the cheapness of R477 KRU, reason being that I paid ?40 for the car, and MN found out that a single nut (track rod end nut) from Marcus Gronholm’s car is the same price. James mailed me about this the other day and it gave me much pleasure to put things in that kind of context. It was also really nice to see some of my comments in print, and hopefully people who see us on the stages will have read some of this and take it into account when they see a “slow” Skoda after seeing the WRCs fly through the stages; after all, the entire car cost less than a front-running car’s tyre budget for this event – the build was under ?3,000, and a WRC is ?500,000. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I could do the same in a WRC car, clearly, but I could certainly go faster than I do at present, particularly if I wasn’t thinking “if I stuff this, it’ll take me a year’s work to fix it”. Ho hum!

Finally in Cardiff was administrative checks, which is just paperwork sort of stuff. Last year this worried me, but this year not at all – oddly there is less checking done here than at a club-level rally; proof of insurance wasn’t even asked for which amazes me, particularly as I’d had the pleasure of getting my cover extended by Jayne Auden to cover me, and she’d even emailed me the cover note! Never mind, at least I’m captain legal!

So, that’s most of the preparation done – the stages are all recce’d and noted, the recce car has some massive dents in the floor and the exhaust vibrates like a harley davidson where it rubs on the sumpguard and has about 3 kg of Welsh mud on it. The bar that holds the guard on is bent like a banana, but should be straight (the red line on the photo).