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FLYING HIGH ON THE MANX
July saw a
return for the hallowed lanes of the
Isle of Man for the Mark II Escort.
Partnered, on this occasion again by Iwan Jones.
The car had been fully re-built by J T Motorsport
following the recent mid Wales
stages with new front and rear springs and shockers,
brakes, changes to the differential ratio to a 4.6 to
help with the top speed, having seen the stages to be
used on the Manx.
We briefly ran
as course car on the Ranges stages and run by
Aberystwyth Motor Club on the Sunday before going to the
Isle of Man
which gave a good idea of how the car would handle and
also it gave me the first opportunity to drive on the
Kumho V 70A tyres which I have not previously tried.
The weather was changeable and gave
an excellent indication of what to expect from the tyres
in all weather conditions, and I managed to survive the
Rangers without causing any damage to the car or myself,
as this tends to be the norm from previous visits as
Simon will no doubt recall from our test with the Maxi a
number of years ago !
We arrived on the Isle of Man on the Wednesday evening and was straight into
signing on for the event, which was a particularly busy
affair, as everyone seemed to get off planes and boats
at the same time.
It was great to chat to a number of people and be
back on the Island, but
this time to compete rather than in an organising
capacity as I had been in May.
There had been a lot of talk about
the recce for the Isle of Man not being achievable
within a one day period we started early at 7.00 am on
the Thursday morning, managed to do all the morning
stages and still be sitting down for lunch by 12.00 pm
and that included two passes over all the stages,
including making notes for some of them.
The afternoon session then started after a nice
relaxing lunch at
St John’s Café (highly
recommended) and we were finished by
6.30 pm returning to the grandstand just for
a quick blast at the road in the car to make sure
everything was ready.
The stages themselves were in excellent condition
and offered a really good challenge, in my opinion,
particularly the use of the two middle stages on both
days being the 21 mile Newtown Stage and the Cringle
Stage.
These would form the heart of the rally and extended
over 72 miles of the 165 stage miles in four stages.
I woke at
2.30 am on Friday morning feeling particularly
unwell, some people may know that I suffer from gaul
stones (which, yes I know I must have them removed) and
proceeded to start the day feeling quite unwell,
although I made a determined effort not to let it affect
my driving.
We had an excellent start on the first three stages of
the event, including setting 7th quickest time on the
Kella Stage, to be in 7th position at the end of the
first loop of stages, particularly good going in the
Pinto up against all the multi-valve Escorts.
Will Onions who owns the car was
running some ten cars behind us and was very unsure
about his speed on tarmac, but was setting some
reasonable times and got quicker as the day went on.
After the first service we went into the two long
stages and we had a particularly good run through the
long Newtown Stage, but an absolutely rubbish run on the
Cringle Stage, possible due to the fact that I was aware
that this is the stage which we crashed heavily on in
2008 on the water that had been let to run across the
road on part of the stage and this was obviously playing
on my mind, together with a couple of half spins and
reverse manoeuvres being required when we couldn’t get
the handbrake on the car to work – why, because the tyre
was sticking so good !
Back into service after these stages
and then for some further stages to the North of the
Island
and then the classic Castletown Stage saw us return to
service in 6th overall in the Classic group being the
first 8-valve car in the overall event.
Will had managed to creep up and got in ahead of
us by 0.4 of a second going into the last Castletown
Stage, but then unfortunately put it off backwards on
the last bend of the stage loosing 5 seconds and taking
the rear bumper, rear exhaust box, and boot lid off the
car, which for once gave the lads something to do on his
car at night rather than mine !!
At this point, I was feeling particularly unwell
and went off to bed leaving the boys to fettle and
finish the cars.
Up the next morning still feeling
ill, but certainly up to the challenge.
We went out and had a good run on the morning
stages retaining our position, although the battle with
Will was becoming more and more intense with each
pinching seconds off each other, we had the legs on him
over the shorter twistier stages, but on the power
stages the BDA came into its own.
Leaving service to go into the two
long stages for the second day we were driving out of
Douglas
when the heavens opened, luckily, we had the foresight
to put a pair of soft tyres in the boot and quickly
changed at the stage start.
Unfortunately, Will had not taken that precaution
and we set an excellent time through that stage.
Will lost all confidence in the car on the hard
tyres and was eventually caught and passed, but in
pulling over to let Drew Wylie past stalled the car and
they had to get out and push it to start it, but due to
a broken starting motor, dropping 3 minutes, therefore,
the inter-team battle was over, but we still
concentrated on pushing hard and there was the
possibility of catching Ian Corkhill for the 5th place,
but this evaporated as the stages later on in the day
dried out and we had to settle for 6th overall.
An excellent result for the team, Iwan was
excellent on the notes and moved on in leaps and bounds
after carrying out the recce.
The next event now for the Escort
onto the Harry Flatters on Epynt and reacquainted with
my old navigator, Hu Kent, for this event so it should
be interesting times ahead.
That’s all until next month.
Regards.
Guy Woodcock
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