Skoda Rally Blog

Yesterday it was snowing all day. Today has been a lot better, so much so that I decided to go for the dry option, some Yoko 048Rs. Fitted them, and went off to the service area about 45 minutes before we were due to start. Get everything set, get our times, etc. Paul sheepishly said “Is that tyre supposed to look like that?” Unreal – a puncture! Luckily I’d put a spare in the car, so we at least had something to fit to it. Didn’t help calm my nerves though!

So, off we went to Stage 1. And got there with about 10 minutes to spare, so I got out of the car, and was interviewed by Innes and Alison Marlow for the globecast broadcast, and was really really nervous. I think it showed! But had a bit of fun anyway, and then spoke to a few people from the Britishrally.com forum. But to be honest I was so nervous about it all I just couldn’t make any sense or anything, so I just put my helmet on and got in the car.

Stage one went OK, I suppose. There’s a bit of a surprise as there was a tight 90 Right 90 left before going under the flyover, and the chicanes, which were quite tight. But it went OK, and I had the great pleasure of seeing Ciara Conlan from britishrally.com forum at the end of the stage – never unpleasant!

Back round for stage 2. This time we were wedged between an Impreza and a Hyundai Accent WRC. I was worried we’d get caught, but by the time we got to the long runs on the seafront, we hadn’t been, and couldn’t really see his lights, so we were OK – focus to the front now. Made a reasonable improvement (8 seconds), and – get this – actually beat the Accent’s time by 2 seconds!. Not often I’ll do that!

Back to service, timing was a bit tight, but we got there OK, only to find that we and the Beckett Brothers in the other Skoda (and our only real rivals on the rally) were both given 1 minute penalties – eventually we found out this was an inputting error and had been removed.

I just found out something amusing. I think I might have put down Paul’s hobbies as being “exaggerating”. The commentator apparently mentioned this a number of times when we came through, as well as saying “that’s the slowest car I’ve ever seen”. Well, the results say different – at the moment we’re in front of three cars. Only two of them have had ‘mares, and we’re only 0.8 seconds behind the Becketts.

Tomorrow will see if I’ve made any improvement in driving skill since last year!