Bad luck!

After a succesfull result in the Tank S Rally, I had the privilige to be the co-drive of Steve Titmuss again! The rally we were going to drive, was the Paradigit ELE Rally.

After a long recce-day on the Friday before the rally, we had to do the scrutineering. There were a few problems, but eventually we could start.

Before the start of the rally there was a small recce also. On one of the gravelroads a stone made a hole in the sump of the recce car and the oil was leaking out. A bad start of the rally, but unfortunately it wasn't our only problem...

Finally the rally itself started. We had to get the car out of the parc fermé, but when Steve tried to start the car, the engine wouldn't start. We pushed the car and tried everything, and just before our start-time the engine finally made the sound we wanted to hear!

After the service we went to the first stage. The problems started immediately... The engine wasn't doing well and we couldn't drive at the speed we wanted...

We couldn't find the problem and we drove to stage 2. When we were in the timecontrol before the stage, the engine stopped. Steve restarted the engine, but the engine didn't run. We had our first little fire. We stopped the fire, and we tried again to start the engine.

Then Steve found the problem ,broken rotor arm in the distributor ,so we borrowed some ducktape. As good as possible he fixed the problem and we started. We drove slowly hoping the tape would do his work. We had to change the tape during the stage and we drove further.

After a few kilometers it was over. We had to change the tape again, but we hadn't any time anymore. We had to hand in our time-card and our rally was finished. We called our mechanics Gez and Karel to bring the spares we needed ,so we could fix it. Once fixed ,we drove back to service.

Back at the service we talked with the organisers and they allowed us to drive the other stage. Of course not for the league table, but just for fun. We missed stage 3 and 4, but we were able to drive the 5th. The car wasn't totally running ok, but driving like that was better then nothing.

We also drove the 6th stage but when we had to wait before stage 7, we turned off the engine. When restarting we had a fire again. This time bigger then the first time and we decided to quit. When we drove further, there might be more problems and we were also driving for the fun out of the results, so quitting was the best option.

The rally was far too short for us and we hadn't drove 1 single stage on full speed...

I want to thank Steve very much for being his codriver again and I hope we will drive more rally's together and the rally's will went better then this time!

I also want to thank "Gez" and Karel for doing the service!

Hopefully we have more luck next time!

See you on stage! Titson!

Kind regards,
Martin Nortier