Scrutineering took a long time, but as it was sunny, the queues weren’t too bad. Our scrute even went to the bother of opening up the festering pile of rags that masqueraded as Andy’s overalls, and found a couple of small holes. They were easily explained by blaming them on having to jump into ditches and lift the car out a few times (but we didn’t say how many years ago that was!).
Seeded at a respectable 31, with our main class rival Will Onions (and yes, dear Ed, that IS his name!) at 23, and with just 37 1400s running ahead of our main field we didn’t expect the stages to be too cut up at first.
Daren had bought some more new Dunlops for this event, but the only size they had were 205s – possibly a bit wide as it turned out – and the first stage proved that yes, it was very sandy and dusty and the Sunny was darting about all over the shop. Leaving the windows open a bit as it was bloomin’ hot wasn’t a good idea either!
35th overall and 2 seconds down on Will wasn’t too bad for the first stage but it was only a tiddler, just 1.31 miles. Still, it helped settle us into the event, although only 145 of the 149 starters showed on the results.
Next stage was a little longer at 2.9 miles, but still only a short sprint. No real problems showed up except Daren found the corners were mostly 90º bends, which doesn’t really suit the Sunny. Here though we pulled back 3 seconds on Will, giving us a one second class lead.
On into stage 3. 5.37 miles and some seriously fast, but narrow tracks. A couple of bits were over a kilometre long which meant running out of revs in 6th gear, all the while the car bouncing around and trying to chuck itself off into the undergrowth. VERY HAIRY! However Daren’s fairly brave, or mad, or both and despite still trying to take the tight corners a bit too quickly and sliding a bit wide on the exits, he managed to pull out another second on Will’s RS2000 Kit car. 21st fastest here so things were looking up – although we had no idea at the time of where we were in the results.
Stage 4, 6.22 miles and the day is getting hotter and the dust rising. This stage was again mostly straights and square corners, with just a few exceptions……. That included a very long 45 left that led onto a short straight and us looking for the next arrowed junction left. It was there, but the dust meant we didn’t see the advance arrow on a brow and we steamed over the brow to find the next corner about a car length closer than the distance that we could scrub off to make it. Yep, straight on through the tape. Stopped ok, but the engine stalled and didn’t want to fire up again too well at all. Bummer! And this only 1000 metres from the finish! That little escapade gave us only 44th fastest overall, but surprisingly we only dropped 9 seconds to Mr Onions. We found out later that a number of cars had problems there, so maybe he did too. The in-car video should show how long we were stationary!
From there it was on to stage 5 in Clipstone Forest. This was one weird stage! VERY tight and narrow, it included a couple of railway crossings in the trees and lots of 90s. It was also flippin’ rough! In fact it was much more like doing the Preston Road Rally in Norfolk for those that know it, and for those that don’t just take it as being the hardest you’ll ever drive in a motor! 5.53 miles later, we met the flying finish and not a
moment
too soon! We found later that we had taken no less than 12 seconds from
our rival and were 29th fastest, but at the time we were sure that we weren’t
doing very well, with Daren backing off much more than he would like to
try and preserve those fragile driveshafts.
We had been seeing Mark Dawson in the Range Rover after most stages, but hadn’t needed to do anything to the car, fortunately. After Clipstone it was onto the first proper service halt at Thoresby Park. We only had 30 minutes to check the car over, so put the front up on stands and took the wheels off, then jacked the back up to take those wheels off too. Suddenly there was a strangled squeak from the front of the car as it all slid backwards, coming off the front stands and trapping Mark underneath. Oh sh*t! A good number of people rushed over and we managed to lift the front of the car enough to get him out, but it was clear that the full weight of the car had landed on his leg. Very quickly the St John’s ambulance was at the scene, but it appeared that his steel toe-capped boots had saved him from serious injury.
After some careful checking over it seemed as though nothing was broken, but although he was hopping about, in pain, it was decided that he would stay in service and wait for us to come back again.
We managed to jack the car back up off the ground and put the wheels back on, but not surprisingly nothing much else got done.
Until now, all the stages had been very close together, but after service, we were due to drive over 37 miles north up the M1, above Sheffield to a single stage just 5.15 miles long and then drive all the way back again and into service. Not a pleasant trip in a very noisy rally car and not knowing if Mark would be able to carry on in the chase car later.
On we pressed though to stage 6, Rainbow Hill. They said at the start that we would enjoy this one, but we weren’t too sure about that! We had also been warned to be very careful over a couple of stream bridges and to brake really hard after the flying finish. The map showed a much more wriggly stage at first, with none of the straights and 90s that we had been doing, and very quickly Daren found that this WAS a good stage and really got into a good rhythm. Super quick on the second half, the track swung gently left and right along a hillside and it was darn hard to call off the map. Only one lary moment as we pushed the front of the car through ferns on the inside of a fast bent and then we were over the flying finish – braking hard as we had been told. Then we found out why. The road suddenly just dropped away beneath us and although straight, it was 4-500m of very steep downhill to the stop control. Potentially SERIOUSLY dodgy, but actually great fun. We knew that we had done pretty well there and things got better as Mark rang Daren on the long motorway run back to say that he was back in the Range Rover and would meet us when we cam off the motorway. Phew, relief all round.
Back into service for just 20 minutes this time, all seemed ok so with plenty of fuel on board we set off for the remaining three stages.
The results later showed that we were 13th fastest overall on that last stage and had taken a further 8 seconds off Will. At this point we had risen to 23rd overall of the 118 remaining competitors, but as said earlier, we had no idea of our position although we were hopeful that that last stage might have made up for the stall earlier.
Stages 7,8 & 9 were re-runs of some of the earlier stage, although with significant route changes. At least we were aware of the terrain and how tight the corners might be now, so we were able to drive quickly, but more safely. We would also be taking the same corner that we stalled on earlier, so were determined to take great care!
Stage 7 passed without major drama, even though it included some of the dodgy fast straights from stage 3 and 24th fastest was very respectable. However the gearbox was starting to get a bit noisy and had been jumping out of gears occasionally, to the extent that at times Daren would ask me to hold it in 6th so he could hang onto the wheel with both hands. Not for the faint-hearted, I’ll tell you!
Stage 8 was over 6 miles and we thought we might have a problem here. The car in front said that he was down on power and had suspension problems too, but as all he had to do to win his class was finish, he would keep an eye out and move over as soon as he saw us. That’s all very well, but we were concerned that his dust would make some parts very tricky. And so it transpired! In a few places his dust did hang around, particularly on the very fast 45 left just before “our corner”. That wasn’t nice, but it only maybe cost a second or two has Daren backed off for safety. 29th fastest was still good though. What we didn’t know was that Will had in fact taken 2 seconds back off us on stage 7 and a further 4 seconds on stage 8.
The last stage, 9, was a similar run through Clipstone South, which included the Preston type tracks. Dusty, narrow, bumpy – thoroughly horrible! But we made it, the car held together and 29th again on that stage. What a relief that was over! Back to Mansfield Civic Centre now, for the results and awards.
We spent a few minutes looking at the in-car video and it looked quite good, despite some freezes when bumped hard. However although pleased to finish we weren’t in the best of spirits as we were sure that Will would have won the class again, and Mark was still in considerable pain. However before we had a chance to go inside, Daren’s phone rang and it was his Dad who had been following the times on the web, to say “well done” as we had beaten Will and were 18th overall. A great yell bursts out and Daren jumps in the air with delight! Suddenly our mood changed dramatically from resigned relief to positive joy.
In the end we came out 19th overall, but still 1st in class by just 9 seconds, and we had taken back that 4 seconds on the last stage. That was a cracking fight for the class, with a real seesaw set of times. Shame that Will and his co-driver Steve Quines didn’t stay for the awards though. We hope it wasn’t sour grapes!
So now on to the Quinton Horiba Stages in Wales on 26th July – and now we are on pacenotes – Daren’s looking forward to that as we found them good when we did the Colway 1300 series in the 90s. We go into that event just 2 points behind Mr Onions, but hope to come out ahead.