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 The Drinking Club with the Rallying problem
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Club Events: Rallyesport Nogins are held on every second Thursday of the month The venue for the noggins is at Tracks in fourways Come join the Drinking club with a rallying problem... |
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__________________________________________________________________________ Total Tour Natal Rally 6/7 March 2010 I flew down to Durbs a day early to give us a chance to do the notes together. And the weather was cooking as anticipated. Our crew arrived at about 20h30, the same time as the previous year even though they left an hour earlier. Friday began early, we headed off for the shakedown stage. The car was fine, bar from battling to get around a very tight hairpin. But once again he couldn't hear me! We tried different helmets but that didn't help. I was starting to panic, especially when Serge implied that it was my voice that was the problem. That is definitely something I can't change! Thank goodness Kobus had brought down an intercom. I didn't need to even be in the car to know that it was working. We did bits & bobs on the car, including fitting my kitchen clocks, needless to say Serge was not impressed with my prehistoric equipment, but I didn't care, they work. Doc & scrut went fine, & we no longer had to put the car into overnight Parc Ferme so final tweeks were possible. JP went off to compete in a go-kart event while I did my homework. It seemed that the most note changes were the improvement on the ruff stuff. I was still pretty calm on Saturday morning. But did get a bit of a wakeup call when I eventually found the marshall to sign us into the holding area, 10 had come & gone & she wouldn't give me my time even though we had been there for 1 ½ hrs. Luckily the CoC was nearby & gave me the correct time. We were frustratingly slow on SS1 & 2. SS3 was even worse. We hit a bank, spun on a following corner realizing that all was not well with the car. Broken drive shaft the culprit. It was fixed at service & SS4, the last of the day went much better. We ended day 1 down in 14th, our first plan of action, catch Rueda & Dave. We were 1min20 down on them. I was incredibly stressed on Sunday morning for some reason. The plan was 20 seconds per stage off Rueda. We would do 2 stages together between service. After our first loop we had taken 17, but over 2 stages. SS7 & 8 went much better, mission accomplished. As we headed back for service we could see a large cloud of smoke on the road ahead. As we approached I saw Charlie Brown & Greg standing on the side of the road. I just couldn't believe it! As you will all know by now the Ford was no more. So much bad luck for 1 person is just not cool. We were within 25 secs of Rueda as we headed out for the repeat loops. SS9 was a flyer & we closed the gap to 2secs. SS10 wasn't as good, the altenator belt was off, but we had beaten Rueda & Dave and were now 14 ahead of him. At the end of the stage we were asked if we had seen Schalk, we hadn't. We just figured he must have been hidden in the sugarcane. It was a rude awakening to find out what had happened & the realization that we had gone past without seeing him. Thank God there were people around to help. I hadn't been keeping tabs on the guys further ahead, but I caught up with Geoff & found that we were in spitting distance of him & Nick after they had some gearbox problems. 10 secs to be exact. We took that on SS11, but on SS12 he beat us by 2. We would have to settle for 7th or 8th, I wasn't sure. Turns out that Habig & Pitchford had some penalties, so 7th it would be. Not the best result, but also not the worst. We had finished & had points on the board. I was happy with the weekend as a whole & look forward to some good results in the future. Thanx to JC, Altus, Schalk & Jakkie for servicing & welcoming me into the team. Caz I would also like to wish Mohammed & Schalk a speedy recovery & hope to see them out & about soon. ________________________________________________________________________________ Tour Natal Rally Review - Paul van Wyk After an absence of a year from full time rallying, I decided get involved again - without breaking my wallet again. I was approached by my friend Piet Bakkes to navigate for him this year on the Nationals in Class A5. I did a once off with him last year on the Ermelo rally where we did pretty well, leading Gugu by more than a minute up to the last real stage when we suffered a left front puncture, handing the win to Gugu in the process. The 2nd in Class that we achieved was still one of Piet's better runs, as he became known as a car destroyer of note in recent years. (See attached his previous Golf). The new car is sprayed in the blue Sasol colours as Piet owns the Sasol garage in Komatipoort and after one night of too many brandy's we decided a new name for the car: "Die Blou Job"! I arrived in Durban on Friday and we went to test on the shake-down stage. Johan vd Merwe was kind enough to give me his notes on the stage which meant I got some navigational practice as well. The last time I really navigated competitively was in 2002 for Barry Grobbelaar, so understandably I was a bit nervous and rusted. The testing went well and we were looking forward to the event. We started on Saturday in very hot and humid conditions. With the fancy expensive ATS underwear and racing suit I was overheating like crazy and I would have preferred sitting in an air-conditioned bar having some cold beers! We started SS1 with great expectations. I was slightly behind on some calls, but just as I upped the pace a bit, Piet told me that there was something wrong with the clutch. He could not change gears for the final 4 km's but we still posted a time 50 odd seconds slower than Gugu and Shaun and 40 slower than Cleenwerck. We were still within reach of the lead. We thought it was only a hydraulic pressure problem that we could sort out at service, but it was not to be. We couldn't rectify the problem but we went into SS2 with a slightly improved clutch. On the road section we stopped to try some more repairs without much success. We lost another 20s to the leaders in SS2 and we went to SS3 without any clutch, as there was no service in between. We started the car in gear and kept it in 2nd and 3rd for most of the stage. Another 2 minutes was lost and we decided to retire during the next service as it seemed like the pressure plate was gone. Game over. A sad end to our 1st event, but after hearing about the carnage that happened on Sunday we can actually regard ourselves as very lucky! We spent Sunday taking out the gearbox and changing the clutch plate, pressure plate and thrust bearing and it seems like our car is now already prepared for the Cape Rally on 26/27 March 2010. See you there! Cheers, Paul ________________________________________________________________________________ 
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