Last night was my first 12 car rally of the year. I had only done one 12 car rally previously, back in the winter of 2005, but only got about half way down the route since we got lost!
Anyway, we set of from Winchester Hill, Droxford at about 8:30pm. We we running on marked maps, since this was Adam’s first rally. The first half of the first section went very well and we were well above our 30mph average speed. I passed car number 6, a white Peugeot 205 Gti, but soon after we turned down a wrong lane and lost a few minutes.
We got back on track and soon arrived at TC (Time Control) 1. We were about 6 minutes down from our due-time with ALL our code boards marked, we were running great! We left TC and continued on and on passed the next TC and so on. In section 4, we again made a wrong turning and I had to turn around. We were already 7-or-so minutes down on the due-time, and the road we were on was not much wider than my car!
I decided to handbrake and try a 180 spin in the road, although didn’t quite have the ball’s to go all-out and failed. We slid to just 90 degree’s facing the hedge. I then had to do a 4 or 5 point turn to turn around, but unfortunately hit the hedge and mud side with the front of my car in the rush. No damage I don’t think.
The stage continued and the rain got heavier and heavier. Running on my Yokohama A008 tyres, I started to see why I really needed some proper rally tyres, as I entered 3-left’s and 3-rights faster and faster I started to slide and drift around the corner rather than turning and actually being "in control!" Fun though!
Anyway, we ended up where we should have done and didn’t do too badly either. We ended up in 6th position out of 7 cars. We were about 8 minutes down from our due-time at the end, but had a lot of misses for the code boards. Great fun though, and many thanks to the Southsea Motor Club for organising it.
This is some of the guys in the car park waiting to go