On a mild morning, 2nd January at 5.00am, the Team headed down to Longmoor Army Base off the A3 at Bordon for the Sutton & Cheam Motor Club Loco Stages.  For once we were quite organised and had loaded the cars and equipment the night before.  When I say equipment, I mean a club hammer, trolley jack and wheel brace.  The two cars (Peugeot 205 GTI 1.6) had been set up and prepared in December, ready for the 205 Challenge starting in April.  So we thought it would be good to have a shakedown rally for a bit of fun and practice. Here are the two reports on the rally from the different cars.

We got there and had a chat to some of the other drivers and established that the stage is 95% tarmac and the rest is gravel.  So we made a decision to run road tyres on the front and slicks on the rear. It hadn’t rained that night but the ground was still damp and very slippery.  All the ingredients for some fun!!!  

We went out and I soon realised the grip was very random.  In some places there was loads of grip and other corners had none.  We came into the wooded area and I could tell by looking at the track, the right hander was going to be slippery, so approached with caution, but still there was no grip at all.  In desperation to keep the car on the black stuff I went for the handbrake, it flicked the back out, but instead off heading towards the tree in a forwards direction we were now heading towards it side ways (much to my Nav's disgust, but I can’t wait to see the photos) we went on the mud and the car slowed down enough to get grip and we were away into the gravel section which caused great sideways entertainment all day.  

With stage one under are belts we were reasonably consistent all day except for Stage 5 where I stuffed up two corners on the trot, and still wasn’t settled and almost missed the split.  I had great day and gained a lot more confidence with the car, and what it was capable of.  Roll on the 205 Challenge!

This event was to be the first time Mark and John had sat in the car together. In fact it was the first time that John has done any rally navigating. We queued for the SS1 as I tried to explain the time cards and what level of detail he should provide on the stage. We headed in to SS1 with confidence but had made the decision not to take any risks. The tarmac was still damp and left us with almost no grip on some corners. We finished the first stage 8 seconds behind Rob and Bob, I was happy with this. We had a couple of problems with catching slower cars on the split on SS2 and SS3.

As the day went on we were putting in faster times as confidence grew. We realised on SS6 that we could take a couple places so pushed hard. We unfortunately span twice on the last two stages losing us the valuable 25 seconds we needed to take 2 places. All in all we had a fantastic day at a fun and well-run rally.
The stages were tight, and very twisty.  Unfortunately due to the number of cars on track at one time, there was a lot of time loss waiting for opportunities to overtake.  All in all, a good day and well organised.  For the team we proved the reliability of the cars and more importantly, drove both of them back onto the trailers at the end of the day, which is always a good sign.

The final results were Rob finished 24^th overall and 7^th in class. Mark finished 31^st overall and 10^th in class. 51 cars started the rally.

Next stop Sweden with the 205 Challenge.