Skoda Rally Blog

Well, it is upon me. Today was the most intense thing I have done in a long time. If not ever! There was all the usual stuff of getting the car scrutineered, last minute modifications and so on, but on top of that a radio interview (having been on Meridian TV briefly the night before after the shakedown stage, which went well), and much frivolity. But as the day wore on, the reality of the situation, that I was taking part in the Rallye Sunseeker, and starting the cars off too, was meaning that I was more and more excited as the time got nearer. Our out time was 6:31, but at about 6pm the car wouldn’t start. The live feed for the ECU is a bit dodgy on the car, and it’s a nightmare trying to find out why – it only ever seems to happen when starting the car, as once it’s running it’s OK. But it wouldn’t start and there was some considerable panic as I tried to find the problem, but we traced it to a loose connection that I can work on. I saw months of work evaporating for a few minutes, but all was well once we got it running again – we got to MC1 and were away. The drive to Bournemouth seemed to take an age, but we got there early, and had to do an interview for the radio station again, which was broadcast on the ‘net – I know this because my Sister heard it in the USA, as did my brother-in-law who got his mates at work to listen too! It’s all quite a laugh, really. Saw some friends down at the start line, which kinda put me off the ball for a few seconds, and then it was time to start. The car wasn’t happy at being left to tick over for so long, and took a bit of getting going again, but then we were off!

Took everything pretty cautiously, as I didn’t want to wreck the car or look a total tool. It went OK, although the car stalled at the end of the stage and took some time to get started again, and this meant we were in a bit of a rush to get round for SS2, but we got there, and realised that the camera wasn’t working (the safety strap knocked the battery out of place, which sucked, but got that fixed, and also raised the tickover so the car would keep going, as being very hot meant it was getting lumpy). SS2’s start was a debacle – there were timecard issues which were not resolved as it was 30 second starts, and the marshals weren’t quite ready as we were the first people to do SS2. So we had a bit of a dodgy start with no time to prepare, but got going and I was pretty angry so I drove harder than before – we really banged the sumpguard when we came to the pier approach, and I was really giving it some beans on the seafront. We did 1:51, which wasn’t quick compared to everyone else, but I was happy with it. Until we were given 2:21, because the timesheet was wrong, and we needed to go back to Rally HQ afterwards to put in a query. From the looks of the website this has now been resolved, so we’re not last – we’ve got two cars behind us, another Favorit, and a Proton in N1. So that’s not bad at all. Bring on the forests, that’s what I reckon.