Skoda Rally Blog

Last night’s work on the car meant that there wasn’t that much to do to it this morning to get it ready for scrutineering – just getting the extinguisher cables finished off, fitting the WRC tracker of doom, and a few little bits and pieces. One big surprise was the WRC tracker – it didn’t take long to fit at all, the power lead being the biggest issue as it needed extending. The LEDs came on (I know not what they meant as it was never explained), and that was it, really. Except we’d forgotten about drilling the block and head for the sealing wire so we can’t take the head off – this is a Super Rally requirement, so it had to be done, alongside a hole to allow fixing of chassis to roll cage so we can’t replace it with the spare one we happen to carry around. We were also told to drill the sump flange so that could be sealed. And then it was off to scrutineering. Firstly, noise test. Now, I’d removed most of the guts of the exhaust, and yet it still registered 81dB, which is way under the limit. Way, WAY under. Then a new experience, having the car weighed, which, it turned out, was 140Kg over the minimum, so comfortably so. Then scrutineering which was done by the guy who has been at Caerwent every time I’ve been there. Previously I’ve had some issues with some of his comments (such as putting bubble wrap on spotlamp mounts as it will stop the car hurting people!), so I was worried. Needn’t have been, really, only issue was having to put tape on the positive battery terminal – apart from that it was all OK, and the sealing was done by a very jolly chap who told me the sump didn’t need to be. Good job it wasn’t hard to get to then!

I always feel relieved after scrutineering ‘cos that’s the last thing that’s going to stop you starting an event. So we walked round the service area a bit, and had a look at the big boys. I can’t believe how little a new WRC car has in common with a road-going version – it really isn’t the same car at all. The Fords have a MASSIVE guard that seems to cover the entire underside of the car, which must make it very strong and also very easy to get over the huge bumps, rocks and ruts that they create. Pity we don’t have one….

Then it was shakedown for non-priority drivers. I just wanted to drive through the stage once as the rally car hasn’t been driven in “anger” by me for a long time, and although the recce meant I could get back in the swing of things (being the same car, made this really worthwhile), I’d not driven with the LSD on gravel. When we got there, first thing was to tell the person behind that we were going to be very slow, so to take an extra minute to start, which they seemed happy to do. We set off from the line (with massive, MASSIVE ruts at the start line), and I got back into it pretty quickly. Not great speed, as I didn’t have any idea of the stage (no recce for us mortals), I didn’t want to break the car either, so just went at about 50% really, and it was good. Very rutty and very rocky in places, but we got there, which is good enough. Back into service, a last nice surprise, being jetwashed clean by two guys, which made far less work for later. And that was it, really. Time to go back to the B&B, after taxing the car as it runs out tomorrow!