Skoda Rally Blog

After a reasonably early (but way too big) breakfast, it was off to do the recce on the first three stages. This was all new – firstly, we’d never done any sort of recce before, having always relied on either patterson’s pacenotes (on forest events) or just maps (for SV stuff), and secondly I’d never had to prepare a car for recce either, so wasn’t sure what to expect. When we finally got to the stage start (at 8am on the dot), two things struck us – firstly there was a huge queue, and secondly, there was a huge variety of cars – in front and behind us were a pair of Evo 8s, but there were people carriers, 4x4s and quite a lot of new-looking cars which could have been hire cars! Many were on standard road tyres, and looked to have less ground clearance than we did.

The queue moved quickly, and then we were off – time to start something that I’d been trying to prepare for months for by calling out roads wherever I drove. Paul wrote everything down, and we didn’t have to go _that_ slowly, apart from where things got a bit rough or there was something a little complex that needed to be noted. Another thing that struck me was that for the most part the first stage (Port Talbot) was pretty nice. Obviously it’ll cut up when used in anger, but I liked it – some of it was very pretty, and there was one bit with a huge drop-off to the right that went down to a lake that was fantastic looking but deadly at the same time. We realised it was the end of the stage when we came to some tarmac and then had to go back round again for the next run. For us this was more a case of reading the notes and seeing if they worked OK and refining everything, and it went pretty well; a few corners needed re-calling and notes adding (such as “don’t cut” or “hook”, etc), but overall there was little to do, and second time round I remembered quite a few bits of the stage. For us it’s quite a bonus as we effectively get to do the event twice – we won’t be going _that_ much faster in the rally car than on the recce!

However, at this point, I should note that the recce car has a lower sumpguard and ride height than the rally car, and there were some points where cringing occurred – the poor thing seemed to be taking quite a bit of abuse, although often with rocks hitting the floor or sumpguard it sounds a lot worse than it is.

The other two stages went smoothly too – the same routine as before, making the notes on the first run and then running the stage on the second, adding a few refinements. This stage and the next both had some ‘fresh air’ bends, which is one thing that I never get used to – I guess I have a strong self-preservation instinct. Or I’m just a big scaredy-cat. Either way, I don’t go flat out on those bits, but the rest was really good fun. The exhaust tailpipe slipped its mount a couple of times (fixed with cable ties a couple of times), but apart from that the car was happy, so we trundled off to service….

…. to find that the new service tent was dead. As a dodo. I think there may have been human intervention as it had broken all the cable ties and lost all the tie-down, and the frame was broken in some odd places, but even half an hour’s work with the drill and bolts just gave us a frame which didn’t work. So that’s that. ?92 well spent. Hmmm. Probably should have left it until Friday anyway, but lesson learnt.

On the upside, we’ve worked something out using some fencing we were told we could move which should do the trick as I don’t want to spend a whole load more money on some flimsy chinese piece of poo. And the generator has arrived and is all working OK.

I have to end this on a moan, though. Tonight we had to collect the WRC tracking unit, which we have been selected to fit to our car. This meant a trip to Cardiff (which is a pain in the backside anyway, as we have to go tomorrow, so why it couldn’t wait, I don’t know), but when we got there we were greeted by a couple of surly blokes who presented us with some paperwork for it, and handed a very tired-looking tracker unit and a bag of cables that they seemed surprised I wanted to check through. I did this because I saw the “replacement price list” – WRC tracker, ?2000! A cable, ?150! THat’s for a sodding cable with a crappy 3-pin plug on it. The guy gave me a lot of schpiel about how expensive the connectors were. I think I called his bluff by telling him that I used to wire up nuclear reactors and the like. ?10 for the connector I saw, maybe. Not ?150. Oh, and the WRC tracker power cable that I was told would be 3m long is more like 30cm. WIth two crappily-fitted crimps on. WEll shoddy, and I’m not impressed.

Moan over. It’s late, I have to be up in a few hours, and we have the uber-day tomorrow. So I need a good night’s sleep, as tomorrow is the longest day of the week, I think. The most demanding, anyway – 6 stages to recce, although Cardiff (should we make it that far!) should be relatively easy. However, the timing is really tight, so we can’t hang around.