Greg Todd Rally Review

Thanks to our sponsors - Redhills Benz, Lauries Garage, Valvoline, STS Subaru Reckers and on the day Breezecraft Boats.

Thanks to my team on the day, Sam my co-driver who did a fabulous job, and Terry, my father for the help with the service park, and being ready to spanner.

On Saturday we had our Pace Note seminar, documentation, and Recce. All went well, the roads looked great, heaps of variety with long straights, tight twisty corners, and places such as "Gronholm's Corner " to negotiate.

Sunday dawned...ummm real wet.....

Well, what a day, I think it can only be summed up with, "it rained and it rained and it rained...oh and it was windy to.."

We left AKl at 6.45am, and drove to Mercer to set up the service area. When we got there it was absolutely bucketing down. So out Sam and I jumped to set up the shelter, what a nightmare that was. The wind caught it, it flew up in the air, and we were soaked to the skin. Finally we got it up, tied it to the trailer and got the Rallycar of the trailer.....ahhh settled in now, thanks to the help from my father who brought down more tyes and more canvas to cover us some more, and block out the spine numbing wind.

Start time for us was 10:54am at the Mobil truckstop, and we trundled over at 10:35, got our helmets audited and we clocked in and started the 35km trip to the start of Ridge 1, which was approx. 8km in length.

On arrival, at Ridge 1 we had to queue, as the stages were being used twice, and another car had to slot in front and behind us. So finally our time to start ticked by, and off we went, into a stage that was full of water and some huge ruts (approx. 150cars had been over the stage before us!!!). I was enjoying it though, the new tyres, which are suited to the wet and rugged conditions were going great and holding us on the line nicely. We were splashing through the biggest puddles and no prob's with water in the electric's. Then approx. the 4.5km through the stage, we hit a huge puddle, the windscreen covered over in brown muddy water and the car spluttered.....and spluttered some more, well actually until the end of the stage....we could only do about 50-70kms, every time we got on boost the car would stall!!! So we got passed in the stage and started Campbell 1 late.

We managed to get through Campbell 1, and at the end I could hear a boost leak, so I pulled over once out of the control zone and had a look under the bonnet. Where the Blow Off valve had been was a big hole.... So out came all the spares that I carry in the back, and I plugged up the end of the pipe with some good ol Duck tape. This fixed it, and off to the start of Ridge 2.

Got 500m into Ridge 2 and the tape and fasteners blew off!!! So we struggled through to the end of the stage, and through Campbell 2 again and made a fix after the end of the control zone....and off to the start of Fyfe 1 very late, and very low on fuel, as when the problem was happening, it was running the car on a very rich mixture, practically blowing fuel out the exhaust. Ridge and Campbell were a real mess, the puddles were turning to fords and ponds, there were streams running down the ruts in the roads, and the cars off in the forest were everywhere.

Started Fyfe 1, and all was looking ok, finally had a bit of a chance to stretch the old legs on the car...and the pipe blew off AGAIN.... So we stopped at a junction in the stage and I made another fix which got me through the stage and to about 5km down the road, when it cam off AGAIN. By this stage I had decided that we would get to the finish, I wasn't going to be a DNF, even if we were last. So it was time to take my time with the problem fix this time, and I taped it, fastened it twice and re taped it and got through Fyfe 2, although last on the road....got through there and back to service, finally.

On clocking into Service we were told that the afternoons stages had been canceled, due to the weather, at least we had finished, which is more than can be said for a lot of others in the trees, down banks, and stopped off the road.

For our first event it was a real learning curve, and the we got thrown a real curve ball, but we managed and finished, and still weren't last car, we finished 3rd to last. My co-driver Sam did a fantastic job, keeping us on track and clocking us in and out in what were very trying circumstances. Lets hope we can finish a bit better next time at the next round of the Top Half series in Paihia on the 18th August...so far away.

Congratulations to Alex Gilmour, for winning our class and gaining 17th position overall, he continues to lead Class E. Marty Roestenburg won on the day, with Chris Haldane second and Glen Smith third. Also well done to Dylan for leaving his muffler on the straight on Fyfe 1, nice piece of hardware for all the cars to dodge.....Click here to see the top 25 results

See our next event here.

Cheers

Simon Bell
Redhills Rallyteam