Sunday 11th may saw myself and the team head to Warcop for the 2nd time this year for the Pendragon Stages in my Voxcloud backed Mini Cooper S R53 challenge car.
The rally would be the Start of myself and co-driver Chris Pattison’s Mini Challenge campaign. Joining the championship at round 3 there was a bit of uncertainty to whether our speed would match up to the other mini crews. With 27 minis starting the event and 8 tough stages on the cards it certainly was going to be a fun day.
Onto the stages then, SS1 went well other than losing around 10 seconds behind a stalled escort at the merge but other than that we managed to go 6th fastest in the Mini challenge. Moving onto stage 2 and a big delay meant we were held at the start for around 30 mins. We managed 7th fastest mini through that stage. SS3 and 4 we posted times of 6th and 4th Mini as the pace began to improve. Through stage 5 we caught a classic mini which we were then stuck behind for several miles losing around 15 seconds and nearly ran off the road several times by said mini that was holding us up, a few words to the crew in service soon sorted that issue out. 4th again through 5 meant we moved up to 5th in the Mini challenge.
Leaving service before Stage 6 I started the car and noticed that it was dropping off the revs, didn’t think anything of it but then as we pulled out of the service spot the car dropped onto 3 cylinders so quick thinking from Danny at CS Motorsport meant the coil pack was changed without either crew member needing to get out the car. We made it to the stage start on time and all was good. We arrived back into service to find out that we had gone 3rd fastest in the Minis and now within 25 seconds of 3rd place. A massive push to win the final 2 stages in the minis unfortunately wasn’t enough finishing just 4 seconds back from 3rd. Without the hold ups in the day, who knows what the result could’ve been?!
Really happy with the pace in the car now and it’s given us a good test for the Argyll Stages in June.
Thanks to my sponsors