Molly's Blog - 3 October 2011 - Rallye de France Alsace

What a weekend Rally France turned out to be!  If you were following the event, you’ll know we finished fifth outright in the Academy field, our best result this year (more of that later). I am sure you have also heard how tough the event was, causing a lot of carnage, even among the guys at the top end. Technically it was a tarmac event, but there were a couple of patches of gravel here (which was good fun on slicks :). What made the rally difficult were the steel poles the organisers had put on corners, theoretically to make sure the competitors didn’t cut the corners. But of course they did! So by the time the WRC Academy crews arrived at the stages, most of our “don’t cut pole” calls in the pace notes were now big cuts. It also meant the corners were very cut up and dragged a lot of gravel onto the tarmac. The trouble was, you wouldn’t always know on the first pass of the stage which corners would have gravel, and it was much more slippery than a normal gravel road would be – you’d have grip, then no grip, then grip again, and a lot of people came unstuck in those conditions.

We got bogged at the very end of Day One and couldn’t get back on the road just five kilometres from the end after hitting some gravel on the exit of a corner, which was really frustrating. So we went into Day Two under Superally regulations (a ten-minute penalty for the stage we had missed) and our plan was to maintain the best pace we could without taking any risks, and get to the end, hopefully to recover some points.

In the morning our plan worked very well and we were in 6th position by the afternoon. After that we were probably a bit more cautious than we really wanted, but our plan worked – better than we expected. By the end of the day we were in fifth position, our best so far. I’m really happy with that because I needed to get a good clean result and fifth is more than I expected. It is also great points.

The reality, though, is all about where our performance is and where it needs to be. This rally certainly highlighted how far we have come, but also how much further we have to go, so while I’m really pleased with the result – especially for Pirelli, and the Australian Motor Sport Foundation and everyone who has supported us – it’s not as if we can just sit back and relax. We just need to keep pushing and pushing, and make improvements wherever we can.

As usual, no time for a break just yet, we have a day at home and then we head off again on Wednesday to do Rally of Scotland this weekend (October 7-9). It’s a three-day gravel rally and we’ll do all three days. It’s the second last round of the 11-round Intercontinental Rally Challenge series so the competition will be full-on. We’ll be in our British Rally Championship Fiesta which is the same spec as the WRC car.

It will be good to get back out on the gravel. The last round of the Academy (Wales Rally GB, November 10-13) is all gravel, so the aim for this weekend is to get out there and put everything we’ve learned so far into practice with the ultimate goal of a strong result in Wales to finish off the year. I believe the Scottish rally has some really fast and spectacular roads, so that should be fun, and the start and finish venues are pretty fancy – we do two stages on Friday night after the ceremonial start at Stirling Castle and then we finish on Sunday at Scone Palace, where the Kings of Scotland used to be crowned centuries ago. Should be pretty amazing.

I’m sorry the blogs haven’t been happening so often of late, but I’ll get myself organised to write a bit more regularly. Thanks for all your messages on Facebook – it’s great to have that support.

Cheers Molly.