2009 News...

The North West Stages Rally, which consisted of 13 different stages each 1 being run twice (26 in total), is centered around the Blackpool area. This is as near to my local rally as you can get as I was born in Blackpool. The VW lupo had been prepared for the rally by John Goff and the Rallyschool team at short notice. The main changes were the addition of a light pod on the bonnet of the car and adjustments to the suspension. My co-driver for this rally was Joe Cruttenden who I think is now getting used to my driving.

The rally started on Friday night with 4 stages in the dark, 2 on Blackpool Promenade and the other 2 at Weeton Camp. I had never driven competitively in the dark, so this was a new experience and also I had never driven a rally car on sealed surfaces before except at the rallyschool. We started the promenade stages and soon realised that the lights in the light pod were pointing to far upwards. We didn't have any time to fix them, so we had to do the 4 stages with what we had. On the Saturday we had 22 stages to complete and as we were at the back of the seeding lists we knew we would be doing the last 6 stages in the dark, so the light pod was fixed so we wouldn't have the same problems from the night before. As the rally progressed many of our competitors retired. Class A started with 12 cars and finished with 4 and the rally as a whole started with 112 and only had 47 finishers. I really enjoyed the stages and I realised that survival was the key to doing well. As the day went on I got time to adjust various settings on the car to improve the braking, which was something I had not been able to do on the Wyedean. We were told at the end of the rally that the commentary at Pontins had done us, Myerscough and the Rallyschool proud. We finished the rally 4th in class A, and actually got up to 3rd in class at one point during the rally. Overall we finished 39th out of the 47 finishers and 112 starters, so it was a great result and I hope I will be able to do the rally again next year. More importantly we have now improved the setup of the car and got more mileage under our belts in the VW Lupo or the Flying Lemon, in readiness for the next round of the BTRDA Rally First Championship in April.

The pictures above shows us tackling the Pontins stage on the North West Stages Rally and also Joe and myself finishing 4th in class. More photos can be found if you click here Rally Gallery.

If you click on the following link you will be able to see Neil Johnson's article on our North West Stages rally experience. Neil is the Motorsport reporter for the Lancashire Telegraph and regularly supports my efforts on the stages. Press coverage.

Thanks to Joe Cruttenden for being my Co-Driver for the rally. Thanks also to John Goff and Gary from the Rallyschool who prepared the car, Gary plus his his mates for keeping us going throughout the 26 stages of the rally and also thanks to the Myerscough boys for coming down and spannering for me.

My next rally will probably be the Somerset Stages on 25th April 2009, which is the next round of the BTRDA Rally First Championship.

Bye for now.