Skoda Rally Blog

Wow, what a day that was. Total contrast to Smeatharpe in a number of ways.

First up, we drove to the rally from here, rather than getting a B&B. Unfortunately I’d mis-read the finals and got our scrutineering time wrong, until I read it at 6am and realised we needed to get there ASAP. Found it no problem at all, and got in the queue for scrutineering, which took a while, but we passed OK. Got to the service area and saw that we looked to be the only one not trailering and not having a big van for service. Got the wheels on, and were so late we missed the briefing and were in a bit of a hurry for stage one’s start. Got started OK, but found that this was a totally different proposition to the last rally, as there was a tight section which was over concrete paths which were only a car’s width, and there was no way to stay totally on them. Really felt it was bashing the car about, much more so than before. Stage two was a little hurried at the beginning, and we found the tyres were going off a bit towards the second lap, after the tight section; this was slowly addressed by bringing the tyre pressures down to 27 front and 22 rear hot, which got it sorted. However, much of the lap relied on being in second gear, which was quite grindy after the ‘new’ gearbox. On the upside, the car was topping 90 on the longer straights, and the brakes were really great.

On the later stages we got things more together, and improved times despite making a couple of excursions into the countryside on one stage when I got a bit OTT, and also really banging the front end hard by making a mess of the hairpin as we were being persued by a lapping car. Note to self: Sod everyone else, don’t look in the mirrors, and get on with your own race.

By stage 6, the car had started popping out of second in tight hairpins, so Kev took to holding it in gear, which worked pretty well; our times were good, and on this stage we nearly caught the car in front, a Lotus-Cortina, which was really good; we later had a chat with them and it turned out they had some issues with the front end (the struts were coming apart at the top) so they were taking it easy in the tight, bumpy section, but we were catching them on the rest of the lap too; the Fav really is excellent under braking, and handles well. On the next stage we were overtaken by a 2-litre Escort on the long straight, but saw that he was braking about twice the distance from the corner that we were, and we could still have braked harder; by the middle of the corner we were right behind him. If there’s a way to get more straight line speed out of the car without sacrificing reliability then the Fav really will be able to kick ass and take names!

Unfortunately the gear problem was getting worse, and during stage 8 it got much worse, and half way through stage nine we lost second completely, which is a real problem as the engine is not grunty enough to pull well in third (although it’s better with the lower final drive ratio; with the old box we would have been screwed completely). Stage 10 had to be done with no second gear at all, although it did have the advantage of showing us that a couple of the corners could be taken with wider lines in third! We got really harried in the tight section, and had to cane it in first, which the car really didn’t like; it started cutting out completely, and I thought it was all over as it stalled a couple of times. We got it going again, and finished the stage, but we’d lost 40 seconds compared to Stage 9 because of it. Final thing was when we got to the last control, the engine cut out, and wouldn’t go again. Lucky it didn’t happen 20 yards before! We got pushed through the service area, and Steve came to help, and we soon found that it was the distributor cap that had packed up and the arm was coming loose, and the oil filler cap was missing. Steve had a universal fuel filler cap which he gave me, and we bodged the distributor back together with some card, and it fired up straight away!

We checked the results, and it turned out that we only lost one place because of the loss of second gear, which wasn’t too disheartening; we’d come 7th in class (of 13) and 55th overall (of 85), which I reckon is really good; more to the point we’d done nearly 80 hard stage miles and had a bloody great time. But without second gear, the drive home was a little dodgy in places, and as it meant I couldn’t take part in the BDCC Slalom today, I went out instead, and went diving today. Now I just need to get the gearbox sorted so it’s reliable, and then we’ll be back. Everyone says that Caerwent is the next event to do, so we’ll have to get an entry for it!