The evening of Friday 4^th March arrived and we were on our way to Stourbridge for the Heart of England Rally Championship and Quinton Motor Club awards night.

Sam and I collected a total of seven awards between us!

• 2^nd Overall Heart of England Driver & Co-driver
• 1^st in Class Heart of England Driver & Co-driver
• 2^nd Quinton Member Single Venue Driver & Co-driver

Sam also won the Quinton Motor Club Ladies Champion trophy!

The awards were presented by Andy Dawson, who was a renowned world rally championship driver in the 1970s and 80s. During his driving career he achieved several international victories and podium positions, both in the UK and at World Championship level. He gave a talk after the awards presentations, which was very interesting.

As usual it was great to get together with the rally family, have a few drinks and a good laugh, and natter about everyone’s highlights from the year.

Our attention could now turn to our next rally, The AGBO Stages at Weston Park on 20 ^th March. Winter has flown by this year, and the Rover has sat patiently while other things have taken priority. When we came to move the car, Sam found we had no brakes! During our last outing at Donington Park, we did have a noise which sounded like something was stuck between the brake disc and the pad. The noise went away so we carried on rallying!

We stripped everything back and found the offside pad had broken up and fallen out, and unfortunately damage was then caused to the disc. We set to replacing both sides, and we are now good to go for this weekend.

I’ve also painted the Rovers wing mirrors silver, just as a fun gesture to coming 2 ^nd in last years championship. Although, there has been some debate as to whether they will last a full days rallying!