Skoda Rally Blog

So, last year’s Somerset was Paul’s first event as a navigator, but we broke a driveshaft. So this year we wanted to finish the event as it features some really good stages, and also two runs up the tarmac of Porlock toll road. But, as I said in my last entry, the new engine wasn’t running at all well.

Scrutineering, etc, was on the Friday, so I set off around lunchtime, and has a real problem about half way there – one of the tyres on the trailer blew out, and I didn’t have a spare. I had to crawl along for half a mile to find somewhere to put the car and trailer, and in that time a pretty big queue had developed behind me. Whoops! There was, however, a bonus – a few cars back was an AA van, and the driver stopped. I’m in the AA, so it was very, very handy that he stopped, and we took the wheel off and went off to a local tyre place, who fitted a tyre for just ?10. Nice. What wasn’t so nice was that TomTom decided I should take the most convoluted B-road route to Minehead, and the windyness and people coming the other way led to chronic brake fade that was worryingly bad at the end.

So, got to Minehead, and thankfully went through scrutineering OK, and got everything set up in service. I always find that once scrutineering is done, I can actually concentrate on the event – before that, there’s always the spectre of something being wrong meaning problems and possibly not starting the event, although this hasn’t ever actually happened!

Saturday dawned a little cold and slightly murky, but certainly nowhere near as bad as last year, just a bit of mist. We set off for Stage one, and there was a real problem – the car was really slow – getting up the hill to the first stage start was a bit of a trial, but we’d just have to live with it and hope it got better as the day went on. Stage one was fairly good – the hills were a problem, and the car wouldn’t really pull past 3rd gear, but at long last I finally felt like I could drive on gravel – I did the autocross on Weston Super-Mare beach a couple of weeks ago, and used that as practice for getting the car sideways and dealing with it without panic. Now that skill was becoming handy – most corners had me with the car finally out of line, and not worrying at all about it. However, we weren’t going well as the engine wasn’t pulling at all well. I thrashed it on the road section (keeping to the speed limit, just keeping in 2nd gear), to try to clear it out, but to no avail. Stage 2 was good fun again, apart from the hills (which every stage seemed to have more ups than downs, but I guess that’s ‘cos they were over in the blink of an eye versus the slow-motion of going uphill at what was now 25mph). Stage 3 was good too, a little slippy in places, but good fun, as was Stage 4, despite being caught by the car behind – once he’d passed us, we kept up OK in the corners, so really it was the car that was the problem, not me, for once! Before stage 5 there was a small delay, so I told the car behind us that we would be slow, and I’d move over as soon as I could. Again, this stage had some big hills in it, but the downhill sections were great. There were a couple of moments, one of which was downhill, and where you’d usually put the wheels in the right direction and hit the power to pull the car straight, there being no power made for an interesting couple of swerves, but I held it. Paul actually went a bit quiet for the first time ever!

Although it was slow, I thought it’d just be a case of “deal with it”, but it wasn’t to be. Shortly after that, the engine died completely. It looks as if the fuel pump has failed, as it would turn over OK and fire but then die, and I couldn’t hear the pump running. So that was that. Twice we’ve entered the Somerset, and twice we’ve not finished.

Anyone who knows me will know I could find the negative in just about any situation. However, this time it wasn’t the case – after the initial round of loud swear words (I only did 2 this time, a vast improvement) and feeling bad for 15 minutes, I realised that apart from that, it’d been a success – I can now control the car OK on gravel, and seeing some of the people coming past after us showed us that we are doing pretty well, really. Not stellar, but competent. We had the pleasure of the company of Shaun Gardener and Ben Innes as their Evo 5 broke both front shafts on the corner where we’d gone out, so we had a little parking lot there, and it made the time pass a fair bit more quickly, and they also did me the favour of giving me a lift back to service so I could pick up the trailer and come to get the Skoda. A big thanks to them and their service crew – they were gobsmacked that we don’t have a service crew!

There was a final insult added to injury – when the Doctor came past he offered to tow us out, and as soon as he tried to pull us out…. the towing eye broke on the Felicia. So that’s another thing on the list of things to do, although the front crossmember has always been shabby, so I think I’ll change the whole thing.

Anyway, there’s lots to do – I think the new engine was duff anyway, as it never seemed happy, and a new fuel pump will be ordered tomorrow. In addition, there’s a growing list of little things to do. This is probably my last forest event before Wales Rally GB which is a big disappointment, but with the current entry costs, I can’t see being able to afford to do WRGB and another event, unless I get some serious sponsorship for WRGB, which is something I will be working on as I think that doing a WRC event in a car which is 11 years old and basically standard (in ‘proper, old-school’ Group N terms) is worth some coverage, and it could prove to be extremely cheap advertising for someone’s company.