Sprint auto parts Rally SA finished last night, and by all accounts it was a successful event for us. Did we finish the event? Yes. Is the car still in one piece? Yes. Did we learn a lot? Yes. And did we have fun? Hell yes!Whilst we lacked the outright speed of our more experianced competitors, we made up for this with consistent performance which saw us take 3rd place in our class, P6, and 24th outright in SARC. Whilst these results probably arent much to write home about, I think they are pretty good considering Ive never read pace notes before, David hasnt driven for 3 years and neither of us have ever competed in this car before.
The event started Friday night with the spectator Super Special stage around the Angaston oval. This was good fun although our slight off road excursion over the finish line was exciting - all the rally hardcores were laughing at my shock, I guess you get used to this sort of thing after a while.
Saturday kicked off with the Golfields and Tweedies stages, both fast blasts through the Barossa area. We saw 175kmh on one dirt straight down Goldfields which, for a dirt rally virgin, certainly got the blood pumping. After service we then headed into the Mount Crawford forest for the first of 4 passes, and this soon became my favourite stage. Long straights and sweeping bends down logging roads punctuated with 90deg turns in and out of the forest and the odd jump and water splash to keep things interesting. With a power steering system that was mysteriously loosing fluid we then raced over Mawsons Row and Kenton Valley, two stages held around the breathtakingly stunning Basket Range area in the mist and fog and then into another service. With another half litre of fluid added for good measure we then got significant air time over a jump in Mount Crawford again, before tackling the Mount Gawler stage - made even more interesting by our lack of pace notes. We then finished the day with another two runs around the Super Special stage knocking two seconds off our Friday night time- without the off road excursion of course!
Biscuits was due to be the first stage on Sunday morning, however this was cancelled due to the extremely slippy condition of the road, so slippy that 4 cars went off the road and hit the same fence in Recce! We cut straight to the Cromer stage before having yet another run over the Mt. Crawford spectator stage. After another service (and yet more power steer fluid) we tackled Honeysuckle, Kanmantoo and Charleston plus, all located around the Nairne/ Kanmantoo/ Harrogate area. Although messing up the pacenotes, Kanmantoo was another favourite stage of the event as it involved a massive jump, racing close to the freeway in the opposite direction and crossing the main Adelaide/Melbourne train line twice! After the last service, we tackled Mount Crawford for the final time. This was our best run of the event as we were really pushing the pace and exploring the limits of the car. We passed two cars in our class broken down and took 50 seconds from the car in front of us - very nice! Sadly this turned out to be the last stage of the event after Eden High was cancelled due to a big crash.
All up we had a great time, learnt a lot and made a lot of bad politically incorrect jokes (sex, homosexuality and disability being the main themes). Many thanks also to our service crew Adam, Simon, Zee and Mike - we couldnt have done it without you!
No comments:
Post a Comment