Slowly recovering from another amazing rally, so it's time to start putting up our video!

Galway this year was the 4th rally John and I ran together in my car, swapped seats from the way we used to run. Our first was this rally last year, where we managed 5th. Each event since we've both improved and we're really starting to click well together. This culminated at our last event, Lanark Highlands, in a second place after a hard fought battle. We were really looking forward to stepping things up a notch this year and hopefully really take the fight to the top guys.

Oh, and for all those of you who've asked or commented, no, it isn't John and I that just got married   Though I did leave the decals on the car specifically to bug him!


Thanks to Robert R. for the photo!

Stage 1:

With our plan to step things up and be more competitive, we wanted to be quick right from the start. We chose to do recce in the rallycar as I felt at Lanark that gave me an advantage. The additional seat time, even at lower recce speeds, still allowed me to get a feel for the car and road conditions before we had to do it at speed. We launched into this stage not really knowing what kind of pace we'd set, and at the finish John felt we'd actually been quite slow, at least until he saw the time. We'd actually beaten our personal record from last year by 3 seconds, and the road wasn't swept yet! Due to the limitations of the current seeding system, we were car 11 on the road, and had just set the 3rd fastest time (5:16.9), making up 30 seconds on the car ahead. Needless to say, the dust got pretty bad in spots!

Stage 1 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRen1IWqO-c

Stage 2: This stage was probably the fastest I've ever driven, and it turned out to have a few of the biggest moments as well! Still running 11th on the road meant we were once again in pretty bad dust, and at 1:35 into the video we came down the hill towards the junction right and couldn't see any of the road! I pitched the car in sideways to scrub off the excessive speed we'd carried in, got away with it, and carried on. Robert's photo shows just how much opposite lock I had on!



Later on, at 3:43 we came to a 5L/kick that I took just a hair too fast and as we went over the kick it really did kick! I washed right out to the outside and dropped the right-rear off the road surface. Please excuse the expletives!

Even scarier for me was our last moment at 4:48, coming out of a very fast section leading back to the spectator area, the fast uphill left hander which we'd noted somewhat optimistically... I attempted to keep it flat, though may have missed the apex due to the dust, I'm not really sure. However, running wide and dropping a wheel in the ditch very high in 5th gear isn't something I want to immediately do again!

Once I stopped bricking and finished the stage, we found out we'd run our fastest time, a 5:09.0, just 1.1 seconds off first for the stage. Wow!

Stage 2 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDkJjkpfrao

Smooth, consistant run. Well done guys. Great to be back in the fray

Nick, I yelled on the first near miss, but that was all Ryan on the 2nd!  Right after that I didn't want Ryan to slow down and get scared so I kept encouraging him, maybe nearly too much a km later!