Skoda Rally Blog

Well, it’s back to reality. I have to say, though, that this is something that I will never forget, a life-changing experience. There are many things I have learnt over the course of Wales Rally GB

• The marshals who man this event are fantastic. Their waving and clapping lifted my spirits every time we came past, especially towards the end of each day. Some of them said they’d been following us all the way, and they knew we had a class win before we even thought about it. Really appreciated.
• We can make our own notes. They even work OK with a bit of practice.
• A Felicia is a tough little car. Anyone who knocks Skodas is an idiot.
• The WRC and Rally GB might be “a shadow of its former self”, but anyone who hasn’t done Wales Rally GB really shouldn’t say it’s “easy”. It isn’t.
• It’s not over until it’s over. Saturday is proof of this.
• ISC are one of the most disorganised, useless organisations We’ve had the misfortune of dealing with. It took weeks and many phone calls made by Paul (peppered with excuses such as “she’s at lunch”) to be allowed to run the in-car camera, and when it came down to it, the ISC people were NEVER around to get the sticker to say we had a camera in the car. In addition, the guy who deals out their trackers is a miserable smart-arse, and they are a bunch of crooks for charging £150 for an aerial you can buy for £10 on the ‘net, and in my case charging £30 for a 150mm piece of 2mm diameter metal rod. This, frankly, is extortion. Dave Richards should be ashamed of himself and his miserable company. Keep the £30. I’ve got a clear conscience. You can’t have.
• Even in my little car, doing an event like this is expensive. An itemised list of the true cost will follow (when I can work it all out), but I think the event itself cost around ?4000 to do, all inclusive.
• The big boys are in a totally different world, both in terms of ability, which should never be underestimated, and car – seeing the Focus WRC in bits showed me that they are competing on a totally different level. It’s a work of art, and a fantastic machine; if only people watching could see the difference between them and ‘normal’ cars.
• I’ll never have the speed/guts to be a ‘real’ rally driver. Things scare me and I back off, probably way too early. But it was nice to hear others say they were scared too – not many seem to admit that, but the last stage really was scary in a little 2WD car
• Tony Jardine is bloody everywhere. It became a running joke whenever he appeared – “Guess who I just saw”, etc.
• Sometimes achieving your dreams isn’t a disappointment. It wasn’t what I expected (harder in some ways, easier in others) but in many ways it was a lot better. I certainly feel a lot better about it all than I thought I would after the bent wheel in Stage 2!
• It was really great to see a “good luck” thread on the britishrally.co.uk forum, and realise that people had been checking the results to see how we’d been getting on, in several cases caring more about us than the big boys!

There are lots of other things, but at the moment I’m still hyper about the whole experience. I should finally get a chance to watch it on TV tonight (as I had it recorded), so it will be really interesting to see (a) how the real drivers do the corners I did (b) if the conditions look as bad on TV as they did in person and (c) if having been there makes watching it more ‘real’ – I think it will.

I’m not going to look at the car until at least the weekend after next, aside to give it a clean off. I’ll take a picture of the inside next time I’m there in daylight, just to give an idea of just how messy the poor little thing got.

Next up is the Sunseeker, but I need a break first, completely, from the car and everything else. And a few grand. And an extra 50 bhp!