Molly's Blog - 19th July, 2011 - Auto24 Rally Estonia

Hi everyone

Estonia was fantastic fun and some of the best roads I’ve ever driven on. I could happily go back there now and do it all over again!

The WRC Academy crews competing all stayed together in a log cabin by a gorgeous lake, the company was great, the weather was wonderful, and the event was great preparation for Nestle Oil Rally Finland.

Mind you, it wasn’t all perfect.. We had an electrical problem, which meant the car kept cutting in and out which was frustrating to say the least! We lost 20 minutes in one stage and 10 minutes in another.  We managed to get the car through by wriggling the wiring loom, and unplugging and replugging connections until it would fire up again. At one stage we were sitting on the start line and the engine just stopped with 15 sec to go. Intermittent electrical faults really are the pits! Once we eventually made it to the finish, the car cut out leaving the final control. Luckily the other WRC Academy crews came to the rescue and pushed us over the podium. So we did actually finish the event even though we lost about half an hour with all the stopping and starting, meaning the end result wasn’t good for us. However the important part – and what we had as our main goal for this event – was narrowing the gap to the fastest Academy teams, and we achieved this.

Our pace improved a lot and we narrowed the gap to some of the fastest Academy drivers considerably. We are now close and the good thing about being at this level is that I now know what I need to do to get the extra speed. That’s what we will be working on between now and Finland. The other important aim for Rally Estonian was for Seb and me to get some miles on proper forest stages. Before this event, we had only done the Midlands rally, which was very short, so it was good to work together on such a high-speed event and have everything fall into place. It’s a really tough call to come into a super-quick event like this one on a totally new pace note system, so all credit to Seb. He didn’t miss a beat, and I was able to focus on what I had to do, which all helped to find the extra speed and close the gap to Craig Breen & Alastair Fisher.

I also want to thank Fabrizia Pons [Michele Mouton’s co-driver] and Robert Reid [WRC champion with Richard Burns in 2001] for their help with my pace notes. Fabrizia and Robert have helped me make them work better with the road, so that’s another big gain as well. This year is all about learning as much as I can, and doing the best that I can, so I’m going into this third round of the Academy series feeling like I’m ticking boxes.

Bring it on!   Cheers Molly

Pushing the car to the Podium