KB Motorsport

Finish. Finish the 90mile of stages at the Abingdon Car-nival Rally, that was exactly my aim – and mission accomplished.

Many thanks to the Farnborough District Motor Club (FDMC) members in attendance for their advice, assistance and marshalling – thankfully I didn’t require anything more than a change of front tyres from the guys in service-park. Thanks to Graham Skeggs too for co-driving!
The special-stages for the day totalled 8 of which the four in the morning were two different courses repeated in pairs SS1/2 and SS3/4 – the afternoon’s stages were these courses reversed. This set up allowing the 90mile of stages to fit within the military airport grounds and providing a good similarity to many of the stages which in theory should allow you to ‘learn’ the course and improve your times. The UK holds many of these single-venue rally events, this being my first – and first proper rally too.

And being based at an airport and utilising both the service roads and run-way’s sees a great variety within of sections within each single stage; from whopping flat-out straights into man-made chicanes or wide sweeping third gear bends, curbed-either-side ‘twisties’, short sections of bumpy-grass and tight bomb-bunker lane-ways. There was also a fair whack of military equipment, from trucks to ammunition container pallets and sea-containers lining sections of the stages ‘behind the wire’ where the military were still patrolling (insert big guns!). At first drive-through of this ‘behind the wire’ section I couldn’t help thinking I was in a made-up Fast & the Furious set or a computer game. But those objects on the sides of the road also provided something which could be hit and probably rip a wheel or two off, so that thought did not last for long. The grin from ear-to-ear after each stage did last though

After a cautious start on SS1 (see time on results sheet) every single of the 7 special-stages following I some-how managed to set a faster and faster time. Helped by not really making any mistakes; except for one straight on in a tight section where the outside wheels met the grass and I had to reverse up a couple of metres. Yet, I still went faster on that stage than the previous time out! A little dumb-founded to be dropping 30seconds, 7seconds, 21seconds, 6seconds etc. on each run out, but more-than-happy to be doing so – even till the last stage. Showing I think how much I kept learning about rallying on tarmac and about the car. And doing so till the end indicates that there is still plenty to improve on next events Bring them on!

Tyres, tyres, tyres! Being my first tarmac rally I chose to experiment a little with tyres and it proved a well known point – tyres count for a lot! I started the rally and did the morning’s stages on my cheaper tarmac tyres (MaxSport RB5’s). Largely I knew I would chew-out and destroy the tyres I started with as I learnt the car. These tyres, for cheap tyres, were quite soft but the car did enjoy under-steering out of corners a bit too much like a std All-Wheel-Drive Subaru loves to do. For the afternoon after some advice on 205 Challenge specification tyres, which I will need experience with if I do the challenge next year, I swapped the fronts to two new Yokohama A048-R Soft’s… “Ahhh, now we are driving!” Now matter how hard I tried with these on, perhaps helped by the ’slippier’ tyres on the back – I could not get the car to under-steer like it was before (minus coming out of some big 4th-gear down to 2nd-gear under-brake sweeping corners), and I was pushing it that much harder than in the morning. Welcome to some serious tripod (three (and apparently almost two) wheel) driving under hard-cornering and awesomely controllable over-steer in the fast bits.

With those characteristics instilled and confidence building, to say I’m stoked with the car is an understatement. I think Graham mentioned the word “stonking!”. The car performed pretty much faultlessly throughout the event (and take a look at the number of cars that retired on the results sheet, it seems its a hard event on engines) – I even drove it home, this 205-Gti is no trailer-queen . But it also pulled like a little-red-freight-train in every gear. The only times I was wishing for more were a couple of times coming out of two particular corners in 3rd-gear when 2nd-gear might have been a bit quicker and when some insanely quick cars (insert Honda Civic V-teck-Yo!) flat-sticked it past me as I was screaming through 3rd and 4th gears!

From 100 starters I finished 40th overall and 5th in class.

P.S. Anyone want to sponsor me? I have a 100% finishing record

Links to some photo’s from around the net.

• Mark Sim’s RallyGallery.com (see the photos of car #88)
• Graham Robin’s Galleries (see Photo 218)
• Darren Toogood’s Photos

Oh, and how good was the English weather!!? 24/23 degrees over the weekend, it was actually hot and sweaty work in the car – and warmer than Perth back home I think!