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Molly's Blog - 7th August 2011 - Rally Finland & Rally Obehere

Hey everyone!

Rally of Finland…. What an event! It certainly lived up to its reputation of being an awesome, but difficult event and one where experience really counts.

I was devastated to have a puncture on the very first stage which meant the overall result was not what I had hoped. We had some stages where everything worked well and I was happy with the improvements we were making.There are other areas which I need to work on and refine to be where I want to be in terms of pace, but some of our split times were really encouraging. It’s very easy to look back now and say “what if” !

After Finland it was straight on the road again down to the port in Helsinki where we took the (now repaired) service van, rally car and recce car on the 30 hour ferry trip from Helsinki to Travemunde in Germany. We had been invited to run as a zero car for Rally Oberhere in Germany. This was a great opportunity to get some extra tarmac experience before the next WRC Academy events, as both of the next two rallies in Germany and France are tarmac rounds. Neal Bates was also over for a couple of weeks so it was perfect to have the opportunity to do a tarmac test with him and we had a test venue available in Belgium organised for us by some friends in Germany. I’m normally more comfortable on gravel rather than tarmac, but the test was excellent and despite my initial apprehension, I really enjoyed getting onto the black stuff. (Never thought I would say that!). The tarmac roads over here are very different from anything we have at home. Thierry Neuville also came out to the test, which just happened to be nearby to where he lives and he sat in for a couple of runs as well. The help from Neal and Thierry was really valuable and very much appreciated.

Rallye Obehere was a great experience. It was a fairly laid-back event with 10 zero cars and 150 competitors. Running as a zero car meant a very relaxed rally. I think Seb found it really weird to be driving into controls early, handing time cards in whenever, starting sometimes on 30 seconds, sometimes on 5 minutes, whatever goes really! It was great fun though and the atmosphere was fantastic. The rally was short, only 35km, three stages run twice. This was the 40th year of the rally and the first time in its’ history that it had rained, and it didn’t just rain, it bucketed down. There was a huge amount of water on the stages which made it very tricky, particularly as there were lots of long straights and heavy braking into junctions. Although a dry event might have been preferable, I’m really glad to have had the experience of a wet event in case we encounter wet conditions in Rallye Deutschland. For Rally Oberhere though, the stage most competitors looked forward to was Special Stage 7 – the after rally party – which kinda started the moment you went across the finish ramp. The Ompah band was playing and a cold beer offered. The party continued in a huge shed with the Ompah band playing loudly – it was definitely a bit different to the DJ’s you’d normally find in a pub!

Oh and almost forgot, the week wouldn’t be complete without a few more mechanical dramas. Yes the van broke down again. This time the intercooler failed at about 9.30pm on Monday night just after we drove off the ferry in Travemunde. It took over four hours to drive 200km to our overnight stop in Bremen. However, we figured that we couldn’t be in a better place , we were in a major German town with a VW van and close to a VW dealer. But the dealer couldn’t supply the part and we had to get to Belgium in time for the test the following day, so some Australian ingenuity cobbled together a temporary fix, bypassing the intercooler. It took quite a few hours to source some parts that would allow the bypass surgery, and then it was a very slow 400km trip across Germany. Neal and Mattie were driving the van and being harassed by trucks on the German autobahns – I don’t think the Germans had ever seen anyone driving that slowly! Our contact in Germany for the test was Udo Schutt, whose workshop was in a beautiful German village near the Belgium border. Within a few hours of our arrival Udo had sourced the parts for the van and let us take over his workshop.

We are now on our way back to England for 4 days to get a few days of work in, wash clothes, re pack bags and then head back to Germany for the next WRC Academy rally. It has been a bit of a traveling circus for the past four weeks but I am quite liking this lifestyle J. Mum has also been playing the role of paparazzi so I am sure there will be no shortage of pictures of our crazy adventures.

A big thank you to Wolfgang from Rally Oberhere and Udo for all their help in Germany and of course Mattie, Neal and Harry for their help which largely consisted of driving and fixing vehicles at all hours of the day and night!

Cheers Molly