Molly's Blog - 18th April 2011

Hi everyone

Our first WRC is now behind us, but that by no way means the challenges and character building exploits have slowed down!

We managed to get home safely from Portugal without any more problems, although unfortunately the same could not be said about our rally car. You may remember we took our UK Fiesta to Portugal to do some testing before the rally.

It was supposed to follow us home and be prepped for the Bulldog Rally – the second round of the BRC which we had entered on the weekend after Portugal.

Then, we got a call to say the truck with our car on it had broken down in Spain, and we didn’t know when it would arrive in the UK.   It certainly wouldn’t arrive in time for shakedown, which wasn’t ideal, but what was more important was actually doing the rally. The turnaround to get the car going for the Bulldog was always going to be tight but this delay and the fact that the car wasn’t running at this stage was going to put even more pressure on the team.  So the guys got everything organised here, and then we headed off to the rally without a rally car! In the meantime, Nick Jones managed to get the truck moving and made it to the English Channel on Thursday afternoon. At least the car would make it to the UK...

The guys worked flat-out on the car on Friday while we did the recce. The recce seemed so straightforward after doing such a technical event as Portugal and we were really happy with our notes. A big thanks to Nick and the guys from CA1Sport for getting everything ready in time for the start of the rally!

We were able to do the ceremonial start on the Friday night and start the rally on Saturday morning. It was very wet and slippery and we took it fairly carefully, probably a bit too carefully.  And then, about 25kms from the start, we had some mechanical problems, which put us out of the rally.

As you can imagine, we were very disappointed. That’s two rounds of the BRC without a result, so now we’re really hoping for a good result at the Pirelli Rally, the third round of the BRC in a couple of weeks time. (April 29-30). We must be getting closer to a really, really good result!

Since then, I’ve been back at work and we’ve been getting ourselves organised for the next events. Bec’s been getting all the documentation sorted – and there’s heaps of that – and I’ve been watching our in-car footage and working out how I can do things better next time. Always looking for ways to be better and faster. I’ve been working on some sponsorship proposals and ideas, as we do need to find some more money!!

After Easter it all gets hectic again. We have two rallies coming up in quick succession. We have the BRC round and then when we finish that, we head straight to Italy for the next WRC round – literally. We finish the BRC rally on the Saturday night and start driving to London Airport!

Luckily my mum is coming over to be team manager for us so we can just focus on the driving during the events. We figure her job means she gets to do the six-hour drive to London so we can sleep! Then we all get on the plane and head for Italy –  and hopefully a much smoother week in Sardinia than we had in Portugal.

Between now and then, believe it or not, we are actually going to stop for a couple of days and have a holiday!  I’m really looking forward to catching up with my friend Emma who has just moved over to London, and Bec and I are taking her to Ireland for Easter. We will be staying with friends and I have a big Easter egg hunt planned.  That way I’ll know where all the eggs will be hidden!

Oh, and there’s a rally going on in Ireland as well so we might just do a bit of spectating too!

Have a great Easter break. Talk to you soon.