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Post date: Jul 29, 2012 6:58:53 PM
Morcambe Rally Report – Sasha Heriot, car 16
Saturday 5am, I was just boarding a plane in Philadelphia in the USA. For me it was 11pm, having travelled all day from Virginia after short work trip. The challenge was to sleep for the 7 hour flight in the middle of 2 (not petite chaps) in economy, wearing my earplugs and a black out mask (the joys of working for a multinational company J)! Well, I managed about 3 hours and Sam picked me up from Manchester airport at 12:30pm.
Sam had packed the tent, so after finding a nice little site near the finish venue, cooking and eating steak sandwiches, we both tried to get another few hours of sleep!
I met Ian (Rookie) Rooke at scrutineering and did the usual rounds catching up with people. The 2 hours of plotting was great. Enough time to make sure that the route was neat and tidy, and even time to check it with my fellow competitors, which is always reassuring.
With neither of us on our local patch we left MTC1 at 12:16am. My aim was to finish a rally (having had a string of bad luck recently), have fun and do a good job for Rookie! The first timecard was a really good warm up to the rest of the rally. Provided we went the correct way, then we were able to maintain the average and not drop any time. Then came the whites....I am not a fan of them unless they are of the nice forest variety, but in road rallying it generally becomes a battle of the bravest. We decided from the offset not to risk damaging the car and end up with a non-finish, so we picked a path over the BMX style track white at a steady pace, dropping a few seconds and certain that the crews ahead would be quicker.
We lost around 10 seconds debating where the start of the white next to the no-entry sign was. Convinced that it was there, we eventually spotted it just next to the tarmac and slid down the track, again losing some time due to hesitation and caution!
My next memorable moment was the field section. Luck was with us and thankfully our seeding down at 16 ended up being very fortunate indeed. After the troubles of the top crews getting stuck, holding each other up and getting towed out by 4x4’s, common sense prevailed and we were waved on by the marshals at two of middle passage checks. Given how little traction there was, I think that we would have suffered the same fate as the top 5 if we had had to stop. I assume the passage checks were scrubbed but it was unfortunate for the top crews that they still suffered huge time penalties which stood at the finish.
After petrol the whites smoothed out to my relief and we carried on making good progress, but we had problems. The temperature light kept coming on and the engine was overheating. I was determined to finish the rally. Luck was again on our side, as a section that originally was competitive was now a neutral section. Since we had not used much of our lateness, this gave us the opportunity to drop some time and let the engine cool! At Sam’s control and with daylight well on its way, it was my job to go for a paddle in the stream and collect water! With wet feet having gone 3 times for top-ups, we set off to the last 2 sections, taking it relatively steady in the hope that the car would not overheat.
We made it to the finish, and to my delight we finished 3rd overall! Huge thanks to the marshals and well done to all my fellow competitors that made it to the finish of an event that was particularly tough on the cars. Finally, thanks to the organisers. Having helped organise both the Dansport and VK I know how much work goes into a rally.
Well, did I achieve my 3 objectives? I finished, had loads of fun and got Ian a good result, so YES!