Bomb-along Stages 2002
Driver: Simon Clark
Navigator: Alan West
Vehicle: Alfa Romeo 1600 Sud
Seeded: 36
Finished: 38th / 8th
The alarms went off on Sunday the 8th at 04:15, I staggered from my bed to see if Erik had awoken ~ we were both off to Oakington as co-drivers. Erik was with Andy Corner as usual and I had been volunteered by Erik (without him knowing, whoops..... ~ Erik) to co-drive in an Alfa Romeo 1600 Sud for a driver ~ Simon Clark ~ I'd never met and who had never driven on a stage rally before. I found out on the way to scrutineering that Simon (my new driver) had only driven the car to the MOT station and nowhere else. As you can imagine Erik was moving slowly down my Christmas card list...
On our way to the venue we were passed by a blue Subaru in which there were another three Streetly members, Adrian Smekss, Lee Carter and Gordon Grantham. They were on their way to meet up with Adrian's new rally Subaru at the venue. Having finally arrived at Oakington I met up with Simon and we had a long chat about rallying and what Simon actually knew about rallying. We discussed how I would be calling the route to him, as Simon had never had a co-driver before we quickly settled for my usual style and set off for noise. This was easily passed at 88db, excellent for this ultra noise sensitive venue! We also passed scrutineering with no problems at all and signing on was also completed with no problems, there only being amendments to classes rather than route which made a nice change. By now Simon was getting very nervous and needed calming down every now and again, either by me, his girlfriend or some of the service crew. (Thanks Julz) Our start number was 69 (yes we knew what some people might think of.....) and we took comfort from the fact that it looks the same which ever way the car is up! We eventually started the rally and I had Simon's promise of "not going very fast until I know what the car is doing and what I should be doing too" still ringing in my ears.
Five seconds became one, became GO, the flag was lifted and away we went ~ for a raw recruit Simon learnt very quickly. We both made a couple of errors but arrived at the finish of the first stage on a high, all the errors were easily caught or corrected and we'd really enjoyed that stage! Not wishing to bore everyone with a stage-by-stage account it's enough to say that both Simon and I really enjoyed every stage, with Simon learning not only the car but Oakington the venue too. Our times became more and more competitive as we progressed further into the event with the final stage being our best of the whole rally. On our first event together, on Simon's first rally in a car neither of us knew beforehand we got a finish, we weren't last and we'd thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We were seeded 69, as you already know and had moved to 38th overall at the end of the rally, 8th in class.
To put our result in context we had an excellent final stage, we went as fast as Simon felt he could go, we really enjoyed it and were on the class pace. Well except for Andy and Erik's time which was some 55 seconds quicker than we'd gone! I'd enjoyed that stage but Erik must really have enjoyed the ride through with Andy!
