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Many thanks to Simon Clarke for his kind permission to reproduce the photos... |
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After the disappointment of the Dukeries I set about (with the help of Mr. George '
Tomsport' Cooke, as always) investigating
what was up with the car's engine. To cut a long story short because, let's face it, you're not really interested - it wasn't the
big ends but the flywheel bolts. Three of them had sheared, the remaining five had wound themselves loose and the flywheel was
flapping about on the end of the crank - hence the noise and lack of clutch. So the problem was easily fixed with some new bolts,
a new pressure plate and release bearing - and we were back on the road again. With good news always comes bad, and the partner story here was along the lines of "Dan, we don't need you any more thanks" - yep, I find myself redundant. I could wax lyrical on that for pages but it would only get my blood pressure up so suffice to say times are tight, but it's not stopping us from finishing what so far has turned out to be a good year. So with the flywheel problems out the way, it was time to get stuck into another forest event - the Woodpecker it was (having missed the Quinton). Once again we were seeded at the back, three from last, which meant we could have a nice lie-in on the Saturday morning. This proved useful because Ludlow has naff all hotels and the nearest we could find for the weekend was back in Stourport-on-Severn. So Friday we had to drive all the way over to Ludlow racecourse, get scrutineered, drive all the way back to the hotel, sleep, get up, drive all the way back to... you get the idea. At least we had plenty of ruts to follow - and if I was stuffed in a corner I could probably rely on these to get me round. In fact, I had my fingers crossed it would be more like a scalextric race - just drop the car in the channels and work the throttle all day. No such luck, naturally, but the day was gorgeous and sunny without a hint of rain. We turned up at Ludlow racecourse on the Saturday morning ready for the start - and at 11:37am we trundled up the start ramp. We might have only been lowly car number 155, but it felt great 'doing the ramp thing'. I even got a microphone thrust in my face and had to conjour up some sort of rallying repetoire - I put on my best WRC "talking bollocks" hat and waffled on about not pushing too hard, get to the finish, looking for a result, yada yada yada...
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Various vids :- Andy Burton (Peugeot 6R4) Andy Baker (AB Motorsport Peugeot 205 1.9 GTi) Andy Drummond (Land Rover Discovery V8) Barry Ellison (Land Rover 110) Daniel Howell (Us, you idiot!) Simon Millington (Mk.II Escort - yay!) |
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With that out of the way we trundled off to SS1, bottoms parping away, and the reverberating thought bouncing around the inside
of my empty head - "Trees are hard, trees are hard". Chris and Becky were our faithful management car, following behind in Karen's
FreeLander, loaded up with spare tyres, oil, water, driveshafts, throttle return springs, bungee cords and so on...
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We arrived at SS1 and set off through Hopton, a fairly short stage, and it was clear that the surface was very different to the
Dukeries of previous. Hard, rough and quite rocky by the time we got to it - and not so rutted either. We went through at a speed
I was happy with, which hardly set the world on fire but put us 160th out of 174, so not bad for what was still only our second
forest event (if you count the 2 stages we did at the Dukeries). SS2 Wigmore came and went without any
major incident, moving us up another 4 places to 156th of 173. We then headed over to SS3 (Haye Park), a spectator stage that would be re-run in the afternoon. This was a nice stage, quite long and flowing and the surface was good too. A fuss-free drive saw us up to 145th. At the end of the stage we found out there had been some incidents at SS4 and that it had been cancelled. This meant we left SS3 and headed straight back to Ludlow racecourse for an extra-long service, but nothing needed doing to the car so the boys at AB Motorsport did a quick all-round check, tightened everything up and left it at that.
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SS5 was the infamous Ceri, which included a 1 in 3 downhill slope commonly known as "The Ski Slope". It was apparently notorious
but since it hadn't been used for years, neither of us had ever heard of it. The talk from everyone else was enough, however, to
instill a bit of respect from us both so we approached it with caution. While queuing up I happened to look down into the footwell
and noticed that a couple of the subframe bolts had loosened, probably due to all the rough abuse they'd been getting all morning.
Thankfully a fellow competitor loaned me his allen headed ratchet and we were all safe again - you don't really want your front
subframe running off down the skislope in front of you, if you can help it. The ski slope itself wasn't too bad, but only because we approached it very cautiously. It was bloody steep, strewn with mud and was very rutted (across the track as opposed to in the direction of travel). This meant you could easily lock up as you hit a bump, but we just stayed in 2nd and off the brakes, and let the engine take us down. No heroics and fuss free. By the end of SS5, we were up to 128th (although there were now only 148 cars still running!). |
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SS6 Radnor was the longest stage of the day, over 13 miles of fast sweeping bends and straight through Radnor forest. This was
an interesting stage but was the least suited to the little 205, which is best on the bends and nervous on the straights (or was
that just the driver!?). Still we managed to get up to some serious rate of knots at places, and I was starting to appreciate
just what forest rallying is all about - by the end, my thumbs were aching from gripping the wheel so hard! It's a lot more
work mentally than a tarmac rally, but when you get to the end you feel you've accomplished more. We made it through without
incident, now up to 108th with one stage to go. SS7 was a re-run of the earlier Haye Park and we had a much better run through. I'm not sure whether I was just more confident in general or if it was because it was a re-run, but I felt we went through much quicker than before, and worked a lot harder. However this would seem incorrect as we only ended up being 2 seconds quicker than our earlier time! We nonetheless moved up to 102nd overall out of 128 finishers, and 23rd in class (out of 27). Certainly nothing ground-breaking but for where we are and what we're in, we were happy with that. The highest placed 205 was that of Andy Baker, who brought it home in 67th overall and 15th in class - not bad for a car that's almost 20 years old!
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The Woodpecker will probably be the last forest stage we do this year, but it certainly won't be our last. The team is going to
concentrate on finishing the Heart of England rounds, then I need to find a job to continue funding my passion! As usual, a real
big thanks to all those that helped us get where we are - Andy Baker, Erik and Alan West, George Cooke, each and every one of
the GID crew, escpecially Becky for putting up with the inevitable social compromises you have to make with rallying - and also
to Dad, without whom none of this would have happened. I know you was watching and I hope we did you proud!
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| Results can be found on the excellent BTRDA rally website, www.btrdarally.com. The official event website is at www.woodpecker-rally.co.uk |