Skoda Rally Blog

Last night around 6:30, set out for the house we’d rented in Swansea, and arrived here just after 10pm, having had a few “moments” with people who were cutting corners in the opposite direction on the way, which was interesting, far more so than the 85 miles of M4 that followed. The journey’s end was nearly interesting too with some idiot in a boyed-up celica locking up on the road where I was turning into the driveway. The house is a huge contrast with the B&B we were at last year – it’s a nice 3-bedroomed place on the bay front, and has everything we need, even a conservatory. Hopefully I won’t have too much time to spend there this week, although with the way things have gone so far, who knows?

This morning meant a drive to Cardiff to rally HQ (a 90-mile round trip) to pick up the passes and stickers so we can get into the service park. Got them OK, and spoke to Andrew Kellitt and was given some news which has really devastated me – the land rover challenge people will be running behind us on the road, as they are in a “separate event”. This, frankly, is a disaster. There’s no way we’ll out-run them on any of the stages and because of the way the timing runs, it will mean that we’ll be caught by all of them on each and every stage. This, basically, has wrecked the event as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have any delusions of ability, and we’re just here to have fun, not prove anything or chuck the car off a cliff. And now it’ll mean I’ll constantly be needing to look in my mirrors, which for me is a total distraction – as soon as I see anyone behind it means my concentration is divided, and it’s the worst news I could think of getting this morning. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have an issue with the other guys running, but it seems a totally odd thing to run faster cars behind a slower one with a small gap – the BTRDA 10 minutes would make sense, as when I ran like that I didn’t get caught even by Mr. Burton. And on the long Sunday stages, all of them will catch us. If I had known this, I wouldn’t have entered, in short. This news was only taken slightly away from my mind by the Lintons phoning with the news that they’d ordered a full set of 15″ tyres. And their car is running on 14s. Oh dear.

Tesco’s to buy stuff for lunch and dinner, and then off to set up at the service park, where we’d heard the security weren’t letting ANYONE in, even the Subaru WRC team. Interesting!

The trip to the service park should have been straightforward – take service van and trailer with rally car to trailer park, get car off of trailer, drop trailer off, get rally car, done. However, things weren’t quite that simple. Service is at the new SA1 Swansea park, which is billed as being the hub of business and place to live in Swansea. There’s only one problem with that – it’s not finished. Not even close. In fact this is the second time I’ve actually felt that maybe I’m not so unprepared after all – clearly the place is a building site, but way more than that, it’s bedlam, or at least it was when I turned up. As a result it took quite a long time to finally locate the actual trailer park, by which time Paul had caught up in the recce car, and we then had to move the trailer again as someone had told us one place was OK and clearly it wasn’t. Finally got everything where it should be, and had another disappointment – we were told that the service area would be hard tarmac. Well, it’s not – it’s very much like Felindre was last year, tarmac-based gravel, essentially. Hopefully it will drain quicker than Felindre did as that was a real problem, and it looks like it’ll rain towards the end of the week. Oh good.

The service area is a lot busier this year at this time of the week than last year – there seemed to be a lot more rally cars there and all the manufacturers’ teams were setting up already, which wasn’t the case last year; I guess being in Ireland meant they were already hanging about…. However, it still seems quite empty, especially from our end (i.e. the very back of everything)

A change of tyres was made on the recce car, and I stickered the rally car up, as Paul is clearly allergic to stickering duties and makes a pig’s ear of them every time. So the rally car looks like it should do (or thereabouts after yesterday’s sticker issues, and not having time to fit the green stripes or any of the side stickers I wanted to), and the recce car is ready to go.

As the Lintons still haven’t turned up (they phoned and said they were in Northampton, trying to get their leaky front shocks rebuilt), we can’t set much else up, so it’s just the rally car and service van. This year (especially as we’re on the seafront, so the weather will be a nightmare if it really does kick up), the ez-ups have stayed firmly in the van – no more overnight surprises, please, weather. As you can see here, we really are right by the sea. Let’s hope the weather stays a bit better than last year, ‘cos it would be hideous there with a cold, strong wind.