2007 NSW RD 1 Narooma Booma

[Crazy Dave]

Well, what do I say but major mechanical DNF with a big hole in the side of the block. Only 4 excel starters, which was a bit of a shame but it meant a good chance for some money and points (or should that be the other way around) but it meant a rush job to get the car ready enough to rally as next to nothing had been done since it was rolled at Bay stages last year. We got the car to what I believed was a safe and usable condition and entered the event. Drove it around a fair bit the week prior to try and sort out any bugs, and played a bit with wheel alignment and suspension as it all felt a bit wrong and making plenty of strange noises but engine felt great (it had only done 1 and a half stages since rebuild). First stage was very aggravating after knowing that Glenn would have had a relatively dry run through while we sat in pouring rain waiting for them to clear a fallen tree. It was similar to Bega with very unpredictable grip as some spots went to mush quite badly, and my hope was that if this continues the whole event will turn to mush, which means anything is a chance and it was time to push and try to get some time back. Was a little off in the second stage after having to push start a celica (Mollys ex car) but was really getting back on it in the third when nearly 15km in, the car stopped with smoke pouring out from under the bonnet. We found oil pouring rapidly out the side of the sump guard and bits of metal everywhere. Will need to pull the thing out and try and work out what went wrong and try to get the engine builder to cover it under some sort of warranty hopefully, maybe, pretty please type thing. This is going to make it harder to get the body properly sorted for Taree but that is one round dropped which means I have to be there now. Not a good start to the year but it was great to be able to throw the thing around again. The most disappointing thing was being behind an evo 3 and not getting a chance to catch it. A celica let me pass it in stage after it had stopped to help someone and just restarted, and I thought it would have caught me on the series of uphill straights we had but we managed to pull about 30 secs time away from it within about 1 km before the engine expired which made me feel like we were going pretty well. But will never know now. Bring on Taree......

[ae86trueno]

Hmmm was a bit wet, Mathew and I did a road closure on SS1 & 6.
We had a tree fall before our point, which made for some late running of the tailenders and it rained heavier after that point. I have video of all the excel competators going past out point which i will post when i find a way to split them all up, but only got 1 picture which i think summed up the weekend anyway. Andrei your definatly improving and were quicker past our point then alot of the cars in front of you.

http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/1629/dscf0042smgc1.jpg
It appears the photo may not be working from imageshack ill re post later tonight


Ben.

[RBS MATT]

Glenn Farrant has taken a run away win in Round 1 of the Race Brakes NSW Excel Rally Series.
Congratulations:D Glenn for your victory from Race Brakes Sydney and i hope all the other competitors enjoyed themselves.Maybe Taree will be someone else's victory

[Glenn]

Thanks Matt! You have no idea how much we all appreciate the RBS sponsorship of the series. The cars look great with the new sticker sets and we had a lot of interest in them down there. The main comment was that it was great that we've got the support of a major sponsor and that everyone was wishing us well for the rest of the series. With more cars on the line for Taree, we'll be really heading in the right direction.

First I want to say a huge thankyou to a whole bunch of people.
- Russell Dixon for spending all Wednesday night till midnight sorting out his trailer so that we could use it on the weekend. Then he drove down on Saturday and seviced for us and dragged the dead Excel back on Sunday. Legend!
- Anna, Spac, Lizzy and the SKDAC crew for letting me impose and bunk in with them for the weekend. You guys rock!
- Sosi, for planning to jump in to nav which only fell through on Saturday morning when his dad took ill, but I'm really pleased to say that his Dad is on the mend
- Mark Forbes for jumping in the nav's seat at really short notice (11am Saturday morning!) and did a fantastic job.
- Matt Boorman's Service crew, ably led by Will and Terry Trewern from Vic who was up to just drop off some parts to Russ, but ended up servicing.
- Last, but certainly not least, THE OFFICIALS. Most of them had to stand out in the rain all day as there were a few repeated stages. Thanks!

OK, onto the event report. Well, we were actually stopped by the fallen tree 2.5 km into the first stage, so the advantage we had over the rest of the field was minimal as we ended up driving on roads that had similar amounts of rain to the guys behind us. However, we clearly had a disadvantage against the guys in front of the tree (including a few P2 competitors) who got the first stage fully dry and most of the second. We got a slow derived time for SS1 (probably around 10-20 seconds slower than what we would have done) and we had to do SS2 in the wet. We thought we were out of contention in P2 because of that......

So SS1 was mainly transport for us, SS2 was the first real stage. It was really slippery for the first few km, so that jolted the confidence a bit. We backed off despite the fact that the second half of the stage was a lot grippier.

SS3 was wet for everyone, even the guys up the front. We were the second car in he group from "behind the tree" and in the intervening 40 minutes, the road had taken some more rain and the mud had "smoothed" out, making it really hard to read due to no wheel tracks. The fog was a bit bad in places too. We had a few decent 3rd-gear slides and despite the variable grip I had a fun time. It's rare to rally in the wet these days, so it was good experience. I was taking it pretty easy though as I just wanted to finish at that point.

First service....nothing to do to the car.

SS4 was mostly dry!!!!! We started out slow because we didn't want to get caught out by any slippery corners, but it became apparent that there weren't going to be any, so we cranked up the pace a bit. You couldn't wipe the smile off my face at the end of it. Even Porbsey was liking some dirty FWD action at that point.

Main service - All good nothing to do to the car....except that when we went to leave, it wouldn't start. Thanks to the guys (including Crazy Dave) for the push start down the cricket pitch. So now we were really in defensive mode. We couldn't afford to stall the car and we had just found out about Dave's lunched engine. So there was everything to lose and nothing to gain by pushing on.

SS5 - First night stage. Despite being in defensive mode, I attacked the first few corners....mistake! I didn't realise that this was SS1 run backwards and when we went through there the first time it was slippy and it had now had 4 more hours rain on it....I nearly stuck it off on the second corner....then I completely lost my mojo and drove like a Nanna for the rest of the day.

SS6 - Went to turn the lights on at the 30 second mark and the driving lights didn't come on. Hmmm. Didn't realise at the time, but the alternator had died and the car was running off the little gel battery and the voltage wasn't sufficient to fire the relays...closer to the end of the stage we lost the maplight and the tripmeter too. So we only had normal high beams.....we were slow as a result

Last service - we hooked the rally car up to Russ' van to get as much charge into the battery as possible. Then we pulled the main battery out of the van and strapped it into the car and hooked it up, removed most of the rear lights.....then we were off for the last stage. Thanks to Russ, Terry and Will for the excellent help. The transport to the last stage was the most difficult part of the event.....only using low beams and with everything else electrical turned off to save as much energy as possible.

The last stage was the same as SS4, but the mojo was completely gone, I was getting tired and just wanted to finish...which we did, albeit quite slowly. We got the car back to the finish and turned it off for the first time since the middle service.....and we couldn't restart it to get it back on the trailer.....phew! That was close!

In the end we managed to win Excels from Whitey and Andrei and we actually won P2 by about 40 seconds. Another feather in the cap for the Excels....4 P2 wins in a row. But it was an achievement to just finish.

Major commiserations to Crazy Dave. If there's anything I can do to help to get you to Taree, let me know.

So thanks again to everyone. Porbsey did a great job in the silly seat. Spot on all day and on the ball with everything related to rallying in general. It was a privilege to have you along!

Cheers

Glenn

========

Oh yeah, a correction regarding the Celica of Ian Wilson's that Crazy Dave had to assist, it not actually Molly's old car, it's just done up like it. It's actually a P2 car with a relatively stock motor...not the P3 weapon that Molly's was.

[Glenn]

Oh, and we ran some new SBS Ceramic pads from Race Brakes Sydney in the front and they are bloody brilliant!

The new stickers from Motographics look great.

Also had some new SP85 Dunlops on the car from Gary's Motorsport Tyres and they worked great too.

Cheers

Glenn

[Andrei]

We had a doco done early, planning to have a bit of nap before a drivers briefing...Which Alex actually did, getting the nick "captain Snooze".
Well, with around 30 stickers kindly provided by Dave, I spent more than an hour putting them in place, the windscreen being the hardest one.
The time was worth it - the car is looking very smart now and hail dents are much less noticeable... It was commented, it now looks like "a real serious rally car" :D When I asked, waht it looked like before, the answer was - just the ordinary rally car :mad:
Thank you all the series sponsors !!!

[Motographics]

Oh, and we ran some new SBS Ceramic pads from Race Brakes Sydney in the front and they are bloody brilliant!

The new stickers from Motographics look great.

Also had some new SP85 Dunlops on the car from Gary's Motorsport Tyres and they worked great too.

Cheers

Glenn

Are you going for the prize for best product placement as well??


:D

[ae86trueno]

here are some Excel's in action From Narooma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s8ITtFhq_Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Zti26Hfh4

More to come

Ben.

[Crazy Dave]

Love the video Ben. I hope we get another wet event as I seem to do alright driving in the wet. Hope you guys are ready to throw the car around at Taree but hopefully it wil be dry so we can have a good run at Knodingbull rd. Fast and sweepy so would be scary in the wet, especially with all the crests that seem to wander of line.