Competition Round-Up

Richard Phillipson maintains his lead in BTRDA class

The Somerset Stages on the 17th April was the first event for new co-driver Brian Commack in Richard Phillipson's Group N Astra.

Brian has previously co-driven for Dick Archer, owner of Wizard Motorsport, who prepare the car.

The event was Brian's first for about a year – but they soon got into the groove. That was until a driveshaft broke! That cost them at least 50 seconds – probably more. In one wheel drive they yomped to service where Wizard put in yet another drive shaft. They then set off to try and claw back the lost time.

They were now beginning to enjoy themselves and Richard was getting more confident in Brian's calls. On stage 5 Brian called 'I'm off the map' and Richard slowed the pace until he heard 'Left 3'. Increasing speed they hit a little bit of water, it didn't look much but the muddy puddle covered the screen. Backing off, they spun, caught it and lost it again, falling off the road in the process. Brian managed to find some marshals to help push them up the bank, but they lost another 5 minutes.

Pushing onto the finish they ended the day 3rd in class, which allowed Richard to maintain his lead in class N3 in the BTRDA Gold Star Championship.

Team Spirit Rally Sport

The Gliddons Somerset Stages (Minehead)

Having picked up Bertie from Ballamy's in Worthing on the Friday morning, we headed west to Somerset.

In good old traditional Team Spirit Rally Sport style, we were on a budget weekend again. We had no spares to speak of, apart from a spare throttle and clutch cable and some hoses. We had four Dunlop M+S tyres, which have done three and a half events, six Yokohama A033's which only had half the original tread and 4 half-worn cheap road tyres.

Stage one, a nine miler, quite rocky in places with odd patches of water. About halfway through we lost top end power making fifth gear redundant. We put this down to bad cam timing after the new cam belt was fitted. Nothing we could do about it now though, so we just plodded on with four gears. We still managed to catch Vanessa in her 106 Rallye about two thirds in, although once we passed her, she managed to stay within sight.

Stage two, a short 1.9 miles on a very greasy surface. Nothing to report.

Stage three, a repeat of stage two. About half way in, the front nearside tyre blew, probably on a rather rough right-hander. We drove it to the end of the stage and swapped it out before heading off to stage four. Unfortunately, we now had on the car three M+S tyres and one worn Yoko A033 on the front nearside. This made the car pull to the left on the road; God knows how it will handle on the stage!

Stage four, luckily only one mile on odd tyres. No real problems, left hand bends were easier than right, funnily enough. We had emergency service after this stage which was just enough time to put matching tyres on up front.

Stage five, very, very slippery in parts, particularly treacherous on half worn Yoko A033's. We tip-toed through the particularly greasy sections in the forest about half way in.

Now at Service A, we switched to the road tyres for the two runs up the Pollock Toll Road. These were 3.7 miles each and really great fun. Ian and I looked at each other at the end with big cheesy grins. I wanted to do them again, but Ian insisted we go back to Service B to put the Yoko's back on the front and the M+S tyres on the rear.

Stage 8, the one miler again. No additional problems to report.

Stage 9 and Stage 10 were repeats of stage two, but in reverse. They had dried up since the morning, so the Yoko's were a good choice up front.

Stage 11, the nine miler in reverse.

Stage 12, a repeat of stage five. This stage had dried up quite well since this morning, although the sections through the trees were still very greasy. I got a quick glimpse of Vanessa's 106 parked up after its roll, but had to concentrate hard on keeping Bertie on the island.

Back to the final time control and then to HQ for the presentations. Bish Bash and BP headed back to stage five to help Vanessa recover her sorry looking 106.

We picked up our very first BTRDA pot for getting 2nd in class, we would have had best improvement on seeding too if you could claim more than one award. A most enjoyable rally, we will be back next year without a doubt.

The Plains Rally (Newtown, Wales)

We nearly didn't make this event! We drove Bertie from Burgess Hill to Newtown without any sign of a problem.

Once we found the queue for sound check, Brian parked up the service barge and we joined the queue and waited and waited and waited. Once the queue started moving I fired up Bertie and for a split second I thought I was in a John Deere tractor! It was pretty obvious that the exhaust had snapped in half and noise check was not the place to be right now. It took us about 45mins to rig up a fix that would get us through noise check and the rally. Luckily we were carrying a supply of penny washers and steel cable!!

To the rally:

The first three long stages were dry and dusty. We had none of those rally 'moments', but just a clean, steady run through. The first service halt, there was nothing to report, so I jumped out of the car a said to Bish, "Major problem!", he looked concerned. I followed up with "The windscreen's all dusty!", I made my exit as it looked like he was making for a bucket of water and I knew it wasn't for Bertie!

The final stage, number four was a different story. Again, another long stage and very dusty, we had trouble with poor visibility. About a mile in we span on a badly rutted hairpin left and managed to stretch the clutch cable, AGAIN! Once we managed to get going, things didn't feel right. There was a heavy vibration from the drive and Bertie wouldn't stay in third. Having experienced this before at Sweet Lamb last year, I figured the gearbox was going walkies and the detent spring and ball bearing had dropped out of the gearbox. We 'took it easy' to the end of the stage and back to final time control for another finish and another bag of point for the Gold Star. Our closest rival in A7 is Stuart Cheap driving a 306 S16, unfortunately he had some problem on stage one and he finished way down the ranking. This meant that we have extended our lead in A7 by 2 points to 9.

Bertie is off to Ballamy's now to have the gearbox looked at and have some welding done on the exhaust. Then we'll be all ready for the next event, the Red Dragon, again on a bank holiday weekend. Another trip to Wales, let's hope it's not so dusty this time.

Y2K

Year 2000 is just around the corner and we are spending a lot of our time making preparations.

Team Spirit Rally Sport will be launching into the new millennium with a new car and new image. We have accumulated a great deal of interest and support with our new project, but we are still looking for a number of financial backers to put the icing on the cake. Want to know more

Another Belgian Success

Sue Orchard and Graham Morris scored another good result on the Rallye Wallonie.

This was their first outing since the Condroz in October and from a field of 70 cars they came home 3rd in class and 32nd overall. It was generally a trouble free run apart from a few scares from a newly fitted clutch.