Another day, another rally! Will we improve our class results? Can we finish another rally in our, so far, reliable Rover 214?

The morning arrived with an unwelcome 4am alarm, but filled with excitement, we spritely jumped out of bed and made our way to Down Ampney for the Cotswold Stages. On arrival at 6:30am, we met up with Ade our service crew for the day, and set up the service area. Ade gave the car one final check over, and before long we were chatting to our friends. The event can only run under new rules, meaning we were all maintaining social distancing and wearing our face coverings.

Our time to arrive at SS1 time control was 09:32 which soon came around. The weather was promising to be continually wet all day, so the plan for SS1 was to take things easy. Down Ampney as a clubman rallying venue is definitely a favourite among our rallying friends, and it has a reputation of being slippery during the first stage.

There was a lot of surface water in places, left from the previous days heavy rain. It proved challenging, especially for those in rear wheel drive cars. We did have a couple of incidents, the first resulting in the removal of a wing mirror, when we became a little too close to a metal sign. Shortly after, on a fast approach to a left turn, we aquaplaned head on into a hedge. Luckily, we managed to reverse out without damage and carry on. We finished the stage 10^th in class with our usual smiles, despite Sam chewing my ear about the wing mirror!

SS2 was cancelled due to a crew needing medical assistance after their car left the stage. We hope they are ok.

The sky was looking very grey, and the drizzle continued on the start line of SS3. After the first chicane, the heavens opened up, and torrential rain hammered down for the rest of the stage. It was a very challenging stage, but we decided to push on anyway. We had a really good run on SS3, with no drama to report. We managed to pass the two previous cars, despite the weather conditions and our intercom not working, finishing the stage 6^th fastest in our class. That pushed us up to 6^th in class too. I was pleased with that!

On arrival back into service, the kettle was on and the weather was starting to improve. Blue sky followed as we made our way to the start line of SS4. The stage was starting to dry out, although this meant that mud left on the stage from the heavy rainfall made for some very slippery corners, and surface water remained present too. We managed to pass the previous car, a Chevette which was struggling with grip on the muddy sections, but then I pulled the bar at junction eight resulting in us facing the wrong way. Seconds earlier, Sam had shouted her orders at me to slow it down, but where’s the fun in that! We lost 25 seconds there, while the Chevette came back past us, but once we were back on our way, we continued to push on to make up time. We finished SS4 7 seconds faster than our previous run, but the error cost us a drop to 10th in class.

We were now half way through the day, and were ready to take on SS5. It all started well, until we hit water on a hairpin right. I didn’t put the wipers on, which meant we couldn’t see anything for a couple of seconds, resulting in us missing the split right. Finishing only part of the stage, we received a 10-minute penalty, taking us down to 14th in class. Cruel, but that’s rallying!

Leaving our frustration behind, we started SS6 & SS7 with a fresh outlook. We just wanted to finish the rally! The stage was looking dry as the sun continued through the afternoon. We were much more competitive during the wetter part of the day and only managed 10^th in class on both the final stages, resulting in 12^th in class and 49^th overall at the end of the event.

With no more rallying planned for the winter months, and with the second national lockdown about to start, it is time to do some checks and modifications to the Rover.