On 6th April we finally made it to our first rally. After the troubles of Weston Park, time had been spent on getting the car fully sorted in time for the next event. This included a visit to AB Motorsport in Leamington Spa, who gave the car a thorough check-up and sorted out several problems, not least of which was completely knackered front suspension. After replacing pretty much all of it, the car was driving like new, so with only a few days to spare, the Horiba D'Isis Stages Rally at MIRA (near Nuneaton) would be the proof of the pudding.
We arrived and pitched up with fellow Streetly Motor Club members George Cooke, Nikki Breslin, Laurence Fowler and Aron Brown - who are the collective might of Tomsport - and got the car ready for noise test and scrutineering. The week before I had replaced the ageing Peugeot Sport Group A silencer with a brand new one, hoping to keep the noise down to the 98dB limit.
Well, it went through noise at 101, so we had a bit of work to do! Already early in the day and with only 20 minutes left to get the car tested and scrutineered, the service crew (both GID and Tomsport) set about on the exhaust. The general thought was that the rear silencer was making too much 'vibration' noise, because it was bolted pretty much solid to a bracket underneath the car. So the boys set about making a rubber hanger from some of George's spares, and we returned to noise test - and squeezed through at a smidgen over 98!
Apart from soldering a loose wire in the extinguisher control box, we had no more problems and scrutineering was a fairly simple affair. Signing on took next to no time, and The Dans relaxed a little in time for SS1 - due for a 9:57am start! The car was stickered up and car 65 (of 69) rolled out of the service area and off to MC1.
Stage 1 was much later starting, so it turned out, but eventually we got to the start line. Here we were, my old chum and I, finally realising a dream. After four months the car was ready, and so were we. The lights hit green, Big Dan shouted "Go!" and the little 205 hauled its arse down the long straight to the first bend.
So stage one came and went, with a few other cars having trouble. We managed to pass the Ford Fiesta of Kelvin Hassell and Ian Cattell, who'd checked in the same minute and were obviously having engine trouble. Further into the stage we came across the other Peugeot 205 (this time a 1600) of Nunspeed's Haydn MacLure who had presumably had an off, as he seemed to be on the pace. The rest of the stage went without incident, apart from myself shagging up a chicane by approaching on the wrong side of the road - still, as Big Dan pointed out, the stage maps didn't help by getting it wrong!
Stage 2 was a repeat of 1, and we managed to improve on our previous time as I started to learn how the car handled and where the track was going. SS3 came and went after which we were running 30th overall. Then, on SS4, a connector on one of the engine sensors came loose and the engine cut out. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but eventually I spotted it, and we were back on the move again, but the incident cost us several minutes.
We got going again but were now nearly 6 minutes down on our previous time (811 seconds for SS4 versus 458 for SS3!). We were now tail-ending the field. We made a decision to carry on pushing but not quite 100%... if I'd taken it easy I wouldn't have really learnt anything but likewise it wasn't worth risking all and sundry by pushing too hard and writing the car off!!
SS5 and 6 were effectively a reverse of 3 and 4. The car was settled in and performing well. Big Dan was calling the stage spot on and I was settling in too. There was still the odd stuff-up on my part; missing gears, overcooking one of the many hairpins... and ending up on the wrong side of the stage at one point!! In fairness the rest of the rally went without too much incident, the car went fine apart from a still mysterious misfire when existing tight right-handers.
By the end of SS7, with one more stage to go, I was under the (mistaken, so it turned out) belief that we only had 3 seconds between ourselves and the car in front. Determined not to finish last, we set off into SS8 and I pushed a little harder. We made an additional 8 seconds on our previous time through, but it wasn't enough. We finished 50 seconds behind car 38, the 205 GTi of Dave Hughes, who'd also had problems earlier on stage 1.
Despite the slight disappointment of stage 4, we were genuinely just pleased to finish our first event. If I had a quid for every time someone has told me "To finish first, first you must finish" I'd have enough cash for a new sensor plug. We'd made it to the end without putting a scratch on the car and as far as I was concerned, that was good enough for me!
Dan
