Quinton Stages - July 2006

A good weekend at the Quinton Stages where everything came together and we achived a 3rd in class, our best result to date, narrowily missing out on 2nd.

The weekend started off well with the car flying through scrutineering and two new tyres fitted, we set off to the B&B and then to the pub!

In the morning we set off to get the car ready and give it the final once over, having done a lot of work to the car in the search for more power, throttle bodies and a new exhaust was fitted. Tim and John met us at the start before they headed off to the service area.

Our start time was 10.35 so at 10.20 we set off to join the queue, our two main competitors were seed ahead of us, so we were going to be able to keep an eye on them.

We headed off to the first stage and arrived to find an hour delay due to an accident, so we sat and waited for the queue to disappear until it was our time to go. We pulled into position and waited for the clock to tick down 5,4,3,2,1 and off we went. The car was amazing with lots more power and grunt, it started to catch me out a little as the corners were coming at us quicker than I expected, so I had to adjust my notes as we went along. The end of the stage was quick with a huge drop off to the left. Darren was really pushing hard but bottled out about 110mph and I don't blame him as the gravel road we were on was only 10 feet wide.

Stage two was pretty much the same, Darren pushing hard and the car screaming it's head off.

Stage three was route 60, the man-made stage used in rally GB. We did this stage last year and we couldn't seem to get to grips with it, so we were quite concerned about it, and to make things worse before we set off a marshal told us that a lot of cars had rolled at junction 10, great just what we needed to settle our nerves. We got through with no major problems and after all of our concerns we managed to set a good time losing only a few seconds to the leader of the class.

Service was next and we had some small problems with the exhaust, but Tim sorted it with no problems. On the way out of service we got some stage times and after 3 stages we were 2nd in class, only 11 seconds behind and only 15 seconds covered the top three so the fight was on.

Stages 4 went well but the tyres had started to go off so we were struggling to keep pace and lost some time as we ended up in a ditch as we exited a corner.

Stage 5 was going well until about 3 miles in when we came around a corner and some spectators we messing around and they forced us off the road into another ditch losing 15 to 20 seconds, Not impressed!

Next service we fitted two new tyres as the others were now scrap and were causing us lots of problems, when I looked at the times we had lost 2nd and were 35 seconds down on the leader. With two new tyres and with two stages to go we decided to push and try and get 2nd place back.

Stage 6 was awesome we were on a flyer Darren was pushing extremely hard hooking every corner and staying completely committed till the end.

Stage 7 was a repeat of route 60 and we really went for it. Near the end we were push so hard we ended going up a bank on a 2 right Darren managed to get us back on track and we made it to the end in one piece. Only to be disappointed as Rob Price who was in 2nd place pulled out all the stops and took some major risks to try and catch the leader, so we managed to lose some more time. But we did finish 3rd in class and 47th overall, which is our best overall finish ever.

After our initial disappointment we were really pleased as we had pushed our competitors really hard, normally we would have been one and half minutes down after 3 stages not 11 seconds.

So bring on the next event, hopefully we can push them just a little more.

Next Event is the Woodpecker in Ludlow 2nd Sept, But before that the Mini is coming out to play on the 29th July on the Fat Albert in Trowbridge come say hello if you are there.