 |
Scottish Rally 2010
A beautiful sunny June day, just enough breeze to stop the dust hanging in the air above the stages, and the midges had all turned vegetarian.
David Bogie and Kevin Rae won again, but only by 20 seconds this time.
Finished 12th Overall
Started 44, finished 44, and 4th in class 8
Rolled lightly just before the flying finish of SS3 Twiglees, losing several minutes and some glass and lights and other optional extras, but made it to the stop line trailing bumpers and water from the rad and smoke from a small electrical fire under the bonnet.
They did think it was end of rally for a while, and radio control wanted the timecards confiscated, but they were having none of that nonsense, applied a handful of cable ties, borrowed my phone to call the cavalry and set off again.
To be honest I thought all they’d achieve was a roasted engine, but they made it to the end of the rally in 57th place. Gaun yersels, boys, that’s the spirit.
A roll on SS1 set the tone for our RSAC Scottish Rally, with the alternator light coming on and not being able to breath/see in the car with no window after the roll we were glad to finish!
Lacking power in the last couple of stages we could only manage 7th in class 4 and 59th overall. A disappointing result for us on this event, as it was an ideal opportunity to close the gap on the leaders of our championship class who both failed to finish.
Full report
A ditch four miles into stage one looked like it would be as far as we were going to get after a roll left us on our side with the car precariously balanced, half in ditch, half on road. Thankfully we managed to push the car back onto its wheels on our own, and with a bit of digging get the car back onto the stage. The damage was mainly cosmetic (bending everything up to, and including, the ignition key!) but on the dustiest rally of the year smashing my window proved to be a major problem as the day went on.
We crawled out of the stage with some interesting handling thanks to a bent bottom arm and limped into the short spectator stage (stage two) and duly ran over two large course markers! Seeing one of the championship leaders stopped at the side of the road after the stage didn''t make us feel any better as we should of used his retirement to close the points gap but with the time dropped in stage one any chance of a challenge was off.
In the 20 minute service we managed to change the bottom arm which meant the car now handled as it should, and made up a makeshift window from polythene to try and stop some of the dust coming into the car.
Our time for stage three was respectable giving the dust in the car made it very hard to breath and see, so for stage four we wore a set of motocross goggles I had thought to bring with me encase we found ourselves in this sort of situation!
A closer look at our tyres after the stage explained our slower time, not a lot of tread left! With the hard surface the knobbly tyres were getting torn and disintegrating faster than normal. I heard stories of people getting eight miles out of a set so I guess it could have been worse!
Twenty minute service number two gave us a chance to clear our lungs of dust and change the tyres to a fresh set for stage five. A thick film of dust on the dashboard showed just how much dust was swirling around the car during the stages.
After a very rough start to the stage we picked up the pace in stage five but got caught in the dust of the car in front and literally couldn''t see ten meters in front us. We followed in the dust for around two/three miles before we managed to pass the car but the time stuck behind it and a lack of power saw us lose more time to the leaders. We suspected the air filter may have become clogged thus sapping the power from the engine, but it may also have had something to do with the alternator light which had been showing all day.
The last stage was the longest of the day and the tyres were shredded again, this saw us pushing a little too hard and sliding into another ditch at around 90mph. This time our pace helped us to pop back out further down the road and continue on which was a very lucky escape. The lack of power was really starting to hurt us and we stopped the clocks around twenty seconds off the pace and slotting into 7th place in class four and 59th overall .
The condition of the car after the stages summed up our day! With trim missing, warning lights on, dented panels and a good coating of dust inside we were glad just to get to the finish. With help from demon-grafixs.co.uk and Opie oils we will have the car ready for our next event on August 7th and are looking forward to representing our title sponsor, RAF careers the week after at the Richard Burns Memorial Rally on the Marham air base as part of the RAF motor sports team.
Best regards,
Lachlan Cowan
Worldwide Rally News
