North Humberside Rally 2008
The North Humberside Rally set in the North Yorkshire moors, A rally that has defeated the leigh rallying team for the past three years, breaking driveshafts at every attempt.
Darren and Rob were determined to finish this year.
We were seeded 202 running behind Graham Middleton our main BTRDA contender. Running second on the road felt a little daunting, being used to following other people's tracks on stage, this would be the first time that we had to make our own lines.
Stage 1: A 9 mile run through Landale, The stages in this part of the world are fast and flowing with the car reaching well over 100 mph so is a bit of a test of nerve and skill as you try and hit your braking points as late as you dare and balance the car in the fast corners.
We set off at more of a controlled approach than normal with Darren not attacking the stage as much as he normally would, so we had a good clean run with no major dramas and setting a good time only losing 3 seconds to Middleton, while pulling 30 seconds clear of third.
Stage 2: A 3.2 mile run through Blakey. Again we seemed to be a little too cautious still trying to get used to the new car, things were going well until the exit of a hairpin right when the car was struggling to grip and the front of the car started to hop, in doing this it managed to break the engine mount and we lost another 3 seconds, but still was pulling away from the rest of the field.
Stage 3: Another 9 mile stage called Cropton. With the engine mount broken we pushed on as hard as we dare but to no avail, Middleton had done some damage to our attack and pulled 14 seconds further away. Coming in to service feeling a little despondent the service crew worked wonders fixing the engine mount with some rubber hose, it was a work of art.
The next three stages were re-runs of the morning stages.
Stage 4: With the mount fixed and some new tires Darren pushed hard really attacking the braking points and carrying much more speed through corners, we managed to cut 16 seconds off the morning time and pulling some time back off Middleton, but not enough to really make much of a chance of winning.
Stage 5: With the heavens starting to open the stages turned to ice, which made it hard to judge the levels of grip. The further we got into stage the worse the car was feeling and unfortunately we lost some more time.
Stage 6: With only 9 miles left the decision was made to get the car to the finish, with over 2 minutes to third place we only needed to drive sensibly and not take any risks as it was still belting down. Which turned out to be a good decision, with 2 miles to the end as we approached a chicane the car seemed to cut out and then restart but on the exit it died altogether slowing to a crawl and then fired back into life. A mile or so later we came into a square left and hairpin right and the car spun in the hairpin for no apparent reason. We got the car straight and managed to get it to the finish.
All we need to do now is drive the 30 mile back to the finishing ramp in Whitby but with 10 miles to go coming down a huge hill the car died again and ground to a halt.
Having a frantic play with everything the car came back to life and off we went, now losing the brakes completely, until you pumped them back up and if you left them for more than a minute the would go again.
With about 2 miles to go there was a very strong smell of burning but we had to carry on with Armed with the fire extinguisher we crawled to the finish.
After the finish the car failed to start, having found the problem to be the battery cut off switch shorting out, and I now have a nice burn on the end of my finger. The braking and handling issues in the last two stages was not the rain so much but the fact that the passenger front hub was starting to fall apart so the wheel was moving all over the place, thank god the wheel didn't fall off!
After all the dramas we achieved a fantastic finish, with 2nd in class and 36th overall.
The next event will be Somerset stages on 26th April, see you there!
Thanks too all the crew for their hard work and to Darren at www.dhopwoodphotography.co.uk and Ant at www.antjacksonimages.co.uk for the photo's
Darren and Rob were determined to finish this year.
We were seeded 202 running behind Graham Middleton our main BTRDA contender. Running second on the road felt a little daunting, being used to following other people's tracks on stage, this would be the first time that we had to make our own lines.
Stage 1: A 9 mile run through Landale, The stages in this part of the world are fast and flowing with the car reaching well over 100 mph so is a bit of a test of nerve and skill as you try and hit your braking points as late as you dare and balance the car in the fast corners.
We set off at more of a controlled approach than normal with Darren not attacking the stage as much as he normally would, so we had a good clean run with no major dramas and setting a good time only losing 3 seconds to Middleton, while pulling 30 seconds clear of third.
Stage 2: A 3.2 mile run through Blakey. Again we seemed to be a little too cautious still trying to get used to the new car, things were going well until the exit of a hairpin right when the car was struggling to grip and the front of the car started to hop, in doing this it managed to break the engine mount and we lost another 3 seconds, but still was pulling away from the rest of the field.
Stage 3: Another 9 mile stage called Cropton. With the engine mount broken we pushed on as hard as we dare but to no avail, Middleton had done some damage to our attack and pulled 14 seconds further away. Coming in to service feeling a little despondent the service crew worked wonders fixing the engine mount with some rubber hose, it was a work of art.
The next three stages were re-runs of the morning stages.
Stage 4: With the mount fixed and some new tires Darren pushed hard really attacking the braking points and carrying much more speed through corners, we managed to cut 16 seconds off the morning time and pulling some time back off Middleton, but not enough to really make much of a chance of winning.
Stage 5: With the heavens starting to open the stages turned to ice, which made it hard to judge the levels of grip. The further we got into stage the worse the car was feeling and unfortunately we lost some more time.
Stage 6: With only 9 miles left the decision was made to get the car to the finish, with over 2 minutes to third place we only needed to drive sensibly and not take any risks as it was still belting down. Which turned out to be a good decision, with 2 miles to the end as we approached a chicane the car seemed to cut out and then restart but on the exit it died altogether slowing to a crawl and then fired back into life. A mile or so later we came into a square left and hairpin right and the car spun in the hairpin for no apparent reason. We got the car straight and managed to get it to the finish.
All we need to do now is drive the 30 mile back to the finishing ramp in Whitby but with 10 miles to go coming down a huge hill the car died again and ground to a halt.
Having a frantic play with everything the car came back to life and off we went, now losing the brakes completely, until you pumped them back up and if you left them for more than a minute the would go again.
With about 2 miles to go there was a very strong smell of burning but we had to carry on with Armed with the fire extinguisher we crawled to the finish.
After the finish the car failed to start, having found the problem to be the battery cut off switch shorting out, and I now have a nice burn on the end of my finger. The braking and handling issues in the last two stages was not the rain so much but the fact that the passenger front hub was starting to fall apart so the wheel was moving all over the place, thank god the wheel didn't fall off!
After all the dramas we achieved a fantastic finish, with 2nd in class and 36th overall.
The next event will be Somerset stages on 26th April, see you there!
Thanks too all the crew for their hard work and to Darren at www.dhopwoodphotography.co.uk and Ant at www.antjacksonimages.co.uk for the photo's
posted by robert leigh at
5:29 PM
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