2011 News...

Basically we went wide on a corner in the 4th stage. The front left wheel caught the edge of the ditch on the inside of the corner and seemed like the mud just simply sucked us in and left us teetering on the edge of a twenty foot drop. We had to carefully climb out of the car as we could feel the car rocking. It was like something out of the Italian Job getting out. As there was nobody around we were unable to get the car out of the ditch (as you can probably see from the attached photo) so we had to wait for the end of the stage. When rescue did arrive, it took the tow truck and the stage marshal's car to stop the Lupo from rolling over and to get it out of the ditch.

We were doing really well up to this point apart from the fact our intercom system had failed. The intercom failing had nothing to do with us going off I might add, it was just one of those things that happens in rallying from time to time. On a good day we might have put the wheel in the ditch and got out.

The rally only counted for BTRDA points, so I still lead the 1400L class and nothing has changed in the English Juniors. I must finish the Woodpecker in September to make sure of the 1400L championship and that rally also counts for the English Junior championship as well. I'm going to see if I can get some practice in a rally car between now and September, not necessarily in a rally, but just time behind the wheel of a car.

The photo above show where we ended up on the Quinton Rally.

My Co-Driver was Joe Cruttenden for the rally and the 1400 VW Lupo was prepared by John Goff and the Rallyschool team (www.rallyschool.co.uk) based in Shropshire.

Bye for now