Plains rally small video

Have a look in the Gallery to watch a small video of us bouncing off a bank

Our Tribute

This was Our tribute to a legend on the Plains rally, he will be sadly missed.

2007 to date

Wyedean

The first rally of the season was the Wyedean in Feb. The rally turned out to be quite different to anything we had done before as it had dumped six inches of snow. The car had had some major work done over the break and a new dog box was fitted There was mixed emotions on this rally as we were second in class by one second 33^rd overall which was our best ever finish, but sadly another competitor had a bad crash and he had lost his life. A very sad day.

The Humberside Rally

The Humberside rally turned out to nice a dry and dusty, it was going to be fast and a good test for the gearbox as it was a bit to slippery on the Wyedean to give it a proper test. We set two second fasted times on the first two stages leading our main rival in championship by over 10 seconds. And after service with only two stages to go we decided to really push to the finish and get max points but after 6 miles into the 9 miler we came into a hairpin left only to hear a bang and the n/s drive shaft had broken and that was the end of that. Just a long drive home. That is three years on the trot we have broken a shaft here “we will never come here again”.

Somerset stages

The Somerset stages saw us with a newly revised car with the new diff, shafts, and hubs that cost a bloody fortune. There was a lot of big competition out for this rally and it was going to be a very big battle there was two ex-works cars Skoda Felicia s1600 car and a s1600 Vauxhall Corsa, as well as some of the normal guys.

After three stages we were second in class behind the skoda , next was the two tarmac stages of porlock hill, we only had some horrible calway inters for these two stages, which turned out to be a big disadvantage as we now had lost second to Rob Price in which we trailed by 2 seconds..

We pushed hard on the next two and we pulled back so we were joint second, we swapped times over the next to and still there was nothing between us. On the last loop of stage we pushed really hard on the first to pull out a 4 second lead over Rob and the skoda had retired with a drive shaft problem, so with one stage to go could this be our first class win, At the start of the stage we were told the Rob had lost his exhaust.

This had to be it now all we had to do was get it home as we thought. When we got back to the rally HQ to my horror Rob had mange to pull 12 seconds out of us and we lost, unfortunately nerves had got the better of us both and we bottled the last stage.

“This is never going to happen again”

Red Dragon

AT LAST CLASS WINNERS

The Red Dragon saw us still hurting from the Somerset stages and this time we weren’t taking any prisoners, after four stages we were 28 seconds up on Rob and with only two to go all we had to do was keep doing what we were doing I decided not to tell Darren the times as he has a tendency to slow down in the afternoon.

At the end we had indeed got our first ever class win winning by 22 seconds.

After watching the in car footage we discovered that Darren stops attacking and that why we lost time.

Dukeries

The Dukeries saw a big turn out with some good bits kit out on display, after two stages we were leading the class and from then on the day got worse and worse, at the end of stage 2 Darren was complaining of struggling to get second gear at times but did not think to much of it. We set off on stage three and after about a mile Darren was really struggling to keep the car in gear having to hold the stick in gear as it would come out on its own, after 2 miles or so we came into a square right and another Square right and the car just came round and we spun and ended up with the front end on the inner bank it took 4 minute to get off. We were now 12th

Having found the one of the gear linkage clips had come off and was repaired at service. We set off to try and get ourselves back up the leader board to try and salvage some points for the championship.

We started stage 5 just as is started to lash it down with rain and after 1.5 miles something else broke on the car and we only had 1 gear third, with only 10 miles to go. After the stage we met up with the service crew for them to find that the bracket that holds the linkage to the gearbox had come loose which was different to the one in the morning. And to top it all off we had a new gearbox casing fitted due to cracking the last one and now this one was leaking.

We did manage to fight our way back up the leader board to finish 2^nd in class for the championship. A good result in the end I surpose.

Quinton

The Quinton had a bad turn out for B10 class with only three starters the rally was really good though as we battled with more expensive and powerful machinery from other classes, we only had one moment on the rally which was on the last stage when Darren didn’t hear me call crest into square right and we ended up in a field opps.

We finished 42^nd overall and won the class by over 7 minutes.

The Woodecker

With only three round to go the battle for the championship is very close between ourselves and the crew of Rob Price and Carl Whitehouse. Whoever takes two win out of the next three will win.

After two stages the time are identical but after four Rob has a slender lead of 3 seconds.

As we left service we were told the times and we new we had to push as hard as we could in Radnor to pull some time back, an inspired drive by Darren pulling nearly 20 seconds out of Rob.

Rob almost instantly starting pulling time back on us and with only 1 stage to go we had a slender 1 second lead, at the end of the stage the proton cut out as we passed the line with desperate measures we set away trying to fix it, only to find that the fuel pump had taking a big hit and had fallen apart somewhere in the previous stage. Darren had said that he felt the car was under powered. We did get going and got to the finish by the skin of our teeth.

Unfortunately we had lost 9 seconds to Rob in that stage and we had finished 2^nd in the class.

The Plains Rally

With Two Rallies to go we need to win both, Now that the car is fixed, on the previous day the car was remapped by John Beattie and we were feeling confident but also feeling the pressure.

The rain dance that I’ve been doing for the past three weeks seemed to have done the trick rain, rain glorious rain had been falling for days and the stages we very slippery.

The stages were what we wanted and we set off at a steady pace as the car felt totally different to Darren, he was struggling with it, but we did have a 7 second lead after two stages and at the halfway stage you guest it we were all square with Rob coming out of service. In the morning we had been running with cut medium compound tyres and the stages were far wetter than anyone had thought so we changed to soft compound with a heavy cut.

On the way out to stage six I had to try a wake Darren up and get him to push hard as historically Rob always pulled time out of us in the afternoon, so if we wanted this championship we had to push hard, and by Christ he did pulling 26 seconds out of Rob in the next two stages and with only one to go.

In the previous stage we had a small visit to a ditch, it does happen when you push that hard, so we decided not to push as hard to get the finish and we finished 25 seconds up on Rob to take the win.