So arrives the end of the 2009 rally year and, in search of an event to 'shake down' the new engine and see if it goes alright, we return to Rockingham for another run around its nice smooth tarmac. We never figured on a few surprises along the way, though!

Day One

Now that's what I call a service barge!

Saturday arrives and the beauty of Rockingham being spread over two days is it's not too early a start; a great bonus for those of us who need our lie-ins. Regular navvie, Big Dan, is sitting this one out so fellow Streetly MC member Geoff Nash has decided he's up for helping me around over the weekend. Geoff's a seasoned veteran, having past competed as a driver in the 205 Challenge as well as navigating. Along with us for servicing duties are Mike, Sean, Becky and Mark from our motor club, the latter having brought along his latest eBay purchase - a 7.5 tonne motor home - so Mark was definately our 'best friend' for the weekend! The usual Saturday business of turning up, unloading, setting up service, doing noise/scrutineering passed without incident and it was all a rather relaxed affair. Seeded at 61 meant we had a fairly leisurely start at about 1.30pm.

The main purpose for the event was to put some miles on the car with it's new Longman-built S16 engine, fiddle as necessary and just get some confidence that the engine was strong and ready for next year. Rockingham was it's usual cold, windy place and although it wasn't currently raining, the track was wet from overnight rain. We already knew from last year that it would be slippy, but the organisers made sure everyone knew about it at the driver briefing anyway. I had one advantage over some people - I'd been here before and knew just how difficult it can be to get heat into the tyres here, and any grip that goes with it. We went out on some soft compounds for the first stage, and just took it easy - no heroics. It was clear straight away that putting down the extra power was going to be a lesson "tentative throttle use" so we pretty much pootled around, or so it felt.

SS2 was just a repeat of the first stage and thankfully was pretty uneventful; the odd "whooa" here and there but really just trying to find a line around Rockingham that had something in the way of grip. Not sure we ever did find any grip; think I'd have had better chances of finding WMD's in Iraq, to be honest. As SS3 approached, the sun was setting, the temperatures were going south and the clouds looked a little ominous, so we switched to soft inters for the last two stages in the dark. This proved a wise move as by the time we'd queued up for stage start, the rain was coming down good and proper. We had a good run on SS3, clearly the conditions catching out a lot of others who I'd guess had less-than-perfect tyres. SS4 would have been the final stage of the day but due to a coming-together of a couple of cars it was cancelled, so day one ended. The big surprise was our standings - level-pegged for 5th overall and 2nd in class with Mr.Gilks in his bonkers Nissan Micra-come-Lotus thing. Reseeded overnight, we would start day 2 8th car on the road - ulp.

We retired back to the hotel, where a few pints were sunk to celebrate a pretty good first day (but not too many; I've learnt my lesson there!) and pray for more rain for tomorrow.

Day Two

I woke up about 7am. To rain lashing on the window. You know, I think that's the first time I've ever been happy to hear that. We returned to the venue on a miserable Sunday morning but for once, that was fine by me! The first stage of the day was probably attacked with a bit more enthusiasm than the previous day. The reason for this? 8th on the road, I'm sandwiched between a Class 5 Sierra RS and a Mk.II Escort snorting on my bumper for the 2 seconds he needs to take my position in class. Three cars up front is the 6R4 of John Indri. It's Rally of the Midlands all over again - I feel like a duck in a shark-infested pond. We set off and I'm conscious of my rear view mirror more than I needed to be. We have a clear run and bring it in without any issues, to find ourselves now running 4th overall after SS5. It's at this point I really do feel like I'm in a surreal alternate reality because I can't for the life of me figure out how we got there or why we should be there.

I make the decision to swap off the super-soft inters to soft slicks, as the rain stopped a long time ago and the track is starting the dry out, and I'm worried that the super-soft inters will destroy themselves on a dry track. This turns out to be the one bad decision of the day - we go out on the harder fronts but the track hasn't dried out quite enough, and we struggle for grip and drop 6 seconds over our previous time around the same layout. For SS7, Andy Baker puts some cuts into my tyres for me to help get some heat into them, we disconnect the front ARB and coupled with a now much-drier track, we're back with grip on the next stage.

However the track has now fully dried in most places except in front of the grandstand, and we start to haemorrhage time to those around us. With the track now dry, the advantage of the rear-wheel drives boys with big power comes to play. In the wet, whether you had 250 horses in a Peugeot 205 or 280 horses in a Mk.II Escort made little difference if you couldn't put it all down. Now it's dry, we're down to the same old issue with any front-wheel drive setup - we've got to steer and power two wheels, whereas the big boys are putting down all of their power through two wheels and steering with the other two. Simple laws of physics mean it's no contest (plus there's a good few drivers out there with more talent than me!). We resign ourselves to slipping down the order. It's inevitable, Mr.Anderson.

The day pretty much runs on at that point. We have a steady run, keep it as neat as we can, but keep it at 9/10ths as pushing won't claw back the time and will most likely just stick us in a concrete wall for our efforts, so I sit back and watch them pass us. We manage to catch and overtake a Subaru at one point, which boosts our morale a little. Since there are two laps in a single stage, we get numerous front-runners coming past us on their 2nd lap while we're on our first - Dave West in his 306 Maxi (what a noise), Jon Indri his his 6R4 (what an even nicer noise) and Rob Dennis in his Vauxhall JRE-powered 2.5 Escort (325bhp and very tidily driven). It was great fun to let them pass and then try and keep up (no chance of course, but fun all the same).

In the end we bring it in 13th overall and 6th in class. Not as dissappointed as you might think really, as we never expected to be even that high given the strength of the Class 3 entry, but we come away with some great memories of the wet stages and what could have been if it had stayed wet... I understand from some friends that car 61 raised a few eyebrows in the grandstand, which is nice to hear, we had lots of encouraging feedback - thankyou to all those who supported us.

I'll close off with a big thanks to everyone who helped at the weekend, congratulations to SMC member Arthur Woodfield on his finish in his 306 GTi6, and commiserations to fellow SMC members Bob Nash and Paul Robinson who sadley retired on day 2 in their Seat Ibiza with what sounded like terminal gearbox problems . Thanks to Andy Baker for helping get the car where it is today (and congratulations too - he went up and did the Preston Road Rally overnight between the two days, and won it!) and thanks as always to my better half for putting up with all of this !!

Time to take a break over winter now. No idea what's in store for next year -  might be something interesting happening - watch this space...

Many thanks to Bob Offer for his kind permission to use the photo above