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Wednesday 2 September 2015

Flying finish to conclude the championship at Mewla

Mewla Rally, Builth Wells, Wales, August 30th 2015

The Mewla Rally organised by Epynt Motor Club offers a unique experience with a German flavour.

The Old Forge Garage Mewla Rally offers some of the most iconic rally challenges in the UK as it takes in the unique setting of the Epynt military training base.

There are wide open flowing stretches where we were able to crank up speeds of 120 – 130mph and also lots of more narrow stretches which are quite technical. The most surreal experience is driving through the streets of a ‘German village’ that was built on site there during World War Two – about 30 houses were constructed in the German-style to create an authentic training ground for troops before heading to Europe. You don’t get to drive through a mock German village anywhere else!

You are always up against the elements when you’re driving in Wales of course and we did not have a rain-free day here.  We started in dry conditions and did the first six stages on slick tyres then switched to a Michelin Slick for the next loop – but then the rain came down and it was like driving on glass with no grip at all. So it was on with the wets for the final two stages. In the middle of all that we got a puncture on the road section which we changed without penalty.

Another highlight of the Mewla rally is the huge jump you have to tackle on the last stage. It must be one of the biggest hill crests on the national rally circuit; and it takes some nerve to approach when you are a new rally driver. No matter how many times you do it, it feels like you are flying through the air for a very long time and is a fantastic feeling. One of biggest ‘Wow moments’ possible for spectators to watch too. It’s a popular spot.

Finished 18th overall and 2nd in class – but more to the point, on completion of this event, we concluded the MSA Reis Tarmac Rally Championship and are delighted to report we have defended our title as winners of the Group N class for 2016.

All our thanks go to DAF, F&G Commercials, Mirage Electronic Cigarettes, Sheffield Rolling Road, Quidbake, Signs Xtra, KHA Business Solutions for their backing; and to Alex Taylor (Northern Body Shell Prep) on event servicing. 

Wednesday 5 August 2015

Going for a spin at the famous Otterburn rally

Tynside Stages Rally, Otter burn Northumberland, August 2nd 2015


We were well up for the rally at Otterburn and set off at a flying pace but during the third stage we got in to a bit of a spin.

We arrived on Tyneside in a very good mood, feeling strong and really up for the event. We got stuck in and were 10th overall by the third stage - when we had a bit of a set-back.
Photo courtesy of Topshot Motorsport Images

A 600 yard straight into a very fast right, very fast left, then braking from 120mph and we missed our braking point for the next tight 90 left. the car overshot and became beached on the car’s belly.

All four wheels were off the ground and, for this first time this season, we had to call upon spectators standing a few hundred yards away to rush over and help give us a shove to get back in action. They did a grand job of man-handling us off the banking and back into play – but over six minutes was lost! And our 10th position dropped to a devastating 70th.

But there was time, Mathew and I concentrated hard and we gradually climbed our way back up the placings.. 60th, 49th, 36th and finally, we were 27th overall by the 12th and final stage, and had managed to hold on to our first in class finish.

Thanks for the rescue rally fans!

Thursday 9 July 2015

Damp weather doesn't dampen fantastic spirit at Irish event

ALMC Stages Rally, Trim County Meath, Ireland, July 5th 2015

Well this was a fantastic event with a strong field of competitors in our N12 class and an amazing amount of support from crowds along the route. 

They really love their rallying in Ireland and the annual ALMC Stages event is obviously a big day for the locals – it was amazing to compete on the fast bumpy Irish tarmac roads and drive past all the gardens where people had their friends round and were holding parties and barbecues. Some had even put up their own scaffolding to get a better view of the action.

And there was plenty of action – partly because the weather was very changable. As usual we were optimistic at first as it was fine so we put on the slick tyres for the first loop of three stages. But then the heavens opened as we drove on the road section to the start line of the first stage. Very quickly there was standing water everywhere. We pressed on and were aquaplaning all over the place in the first loop of three stages. It was certainly challenging and exciting driving – and we notched up respectable top ten times all day.
Photo courtesy of PH Photography

This was our first time at this event and we loved it. The Irish country lanes make for a really interesting rally as they are very fast and bumpy; lots of single track-style with the grass growing down the middle. Good pace, good competition and we finished tenth overall and first in our class – keeping us right up there in the MSA Reis Rally Championship.

A great outing, with thanks to our sponsors DAF, F&G Commercials, Mirage Electronic Cigarettes, Sheffield Rolling Road, Quidbake, Signs Xtra, KHA Business Solutions and the on event servicing from Alex Taylor (Northern Body Shell Prep).

Wednesday 13 May 2015

Competing in Manx Rally for first time is dream come true

IM Gold Manx National Rally, Isle of Mann, May 8-9 2015


What could be better than entering the iconic Manx rally for the first time after standing alongside it, as a spectator or marshal, so many times in the past. Speeding along cliff top roads, dodging hay bales and pushing the Subaru Impreza to new speeds on the corners - we loved it and we loved the end result too. 

Competing in the Manx Rally was a dream come true for me as I attended the event several times as a young man in the 1980s as either a marshal or a spectator. 

The ferry crossing from Heysham was eventful as the sea conditions were very rough! We knew it was going to be bad when the incoming ferry was delayed docking due to high winds. 

However, we arrived on the Tuesday before the event safe and sound and settled into the Best Western Palace hotel and casino. 

Our recce prior to the event went well and some of the routes were familiar which helped. It was clear though that some of the roads, which were basically polished tar, were going to be treacherous in the wet weather. 

Special Stage 1, Kerital 1, was a short stage south of Douglas using a wide tarmac cliff top road. The rain was pouring and it was a nervous start for us. We were very mindful of the huge drop into the sea to our left as we sped along. We completed this stage 43rd fastest. 

The next stage, the SS2 Marine Drive 1, was a repeat of SS1 but then split left towards the end and took us on more typical Manx roads. Lots of standing water made it difficult to commit fully to some of the very fast corners, and aquaplaning twice was scary stuff! But we finished this 30th fastest which took us up to 34th overall. 

A short spectator stage came next, starting in Port Erin and climbing the hillside overlooking the port. We clipped a curb on the front nearside and punctured, but luckily we were near the end of the stage and got it changed. However, we only had a slick tyre as a spare. At the arrival control, the poor marshals were struggling. With cars starting at 30 second intervals in the pouring rain it was a tough one to keep under control and as a result road section times were scrapped. Our placing for this one was 37th which maintained our standing of 34th overall. 

A second stage around Port Erin, then came with the rain still pouring - not the best time to have a slick tyre on the front. However we crossed the line with exactly the same time as the first pass, finishing in 40th place and still holding on to that 34th overall position. 

Getting to grips with the soggy conditions, we entered the 16 mile test of the St Marks stage with growing confidence and finished 25th fastest which took us up five places to 29th overall. We returned to the TT grandstand service area for fuel and no problems to report. 

We had been warned about stage six - SS6 Cringle 1 - at drivers' briefing as 19 cars went out on this stretch at last year's event. So, we began quite cautious. However, I felt the conditions weren't as bad as anticipated and we were able to push on. We had one moment at the split where hay bales had been hit by other cars and were blocking the road. We hit the first one and knocked it out the way then had to drive down a ditch on the left to traverse this section of the road and miss the obstructions. Luckily we managed to get around this without suffering any damage and were delighted to be 12th fastest and move up 12 places to 17th overall. 

This led to us being re-seeded overnight and we were 16th on the road on the Sunday. Conditions were still wet and so we began the day on wets. 

For the rest of the day our confidence grew posting top 20 times and in the end improved slightly on our 16th seeding to finish 14th overall. 

By far the most enjoyable stage was the last - the iconic Baldwins 2. We had already done the stage albeit in the wet in the morning and loop felt confident second time around. Coming 13th overall confirmed this, Mathew was spot on with the notes and the bone dry, hot conditions meant I could commit. It made me realise I can push the car more than I ever thought possible in terms of corner speed and leaving braking later. It also helped seeing the previous cars braking points as a layer of rubbers was laid into every corner. 

The whole team was delighted with our final result of 14th overall for the event; second overall in the national B category and - even better - securing our second win of the season in Group N class of the MSA British Tarmac Rally Championship, extending our lead in the competition. 

The Manx certainly lived up to expectations and it's going to be awesome next year! 

Usual thanks must go to our sponsors DAF, F&G Commercials, Mirage Electronic Cigarettes, Sheffield Rolling Road, Quidbake, Signs Xtra, KHA Business Solutions and the on event servicing from Alex Taylor (Northern Body Shell Prep). Also, a big thanks from me to my partner Kirsty and lovely daughter Georgina for all their support.

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Five minute maxim chased down in Brussels venture

Monteberg Rallysprint, Dranouter near Brussels, Belgium, May 3 2015


Belgium's Monteberg Rallysprint was our team's first venture into Europe and it proved to be a fantastic experience where everything clicked and we hit a top time head on - well almost. 

The Monteberg Rallysprint format was three recce runs over the 9km stage to make pace notes on the Saturday and then four timed runs on the Sunday. One thing that became quite clear during recce was the huge cuts that would be necessary to carry our speed through the corners.

On Sunday morning's first stage, we lined up on the start line on slick tyres and - sod's law - it started to rain. We felt we took this first pass at a conservative pace so were pleasantly surprised when we were 16th fastest. We also noticed that the previous cars had been cutting corners we hadn't marked to be cut and so we amended our notes ready for the second stage. 

For SS2, we changed to wet tyres even though the rain had stopped as the road surface was still wet with some dry patches. It was evident that the corners would become very slippy too by the amount of mud thrown up, this made cutting even more important, especially on some of the 5th gear corners. We were delighted to be 5th fastest and 12th overall. 


Photo courtesy of Vila-racing.be
Before the third stage, we got chatting to experienced Monteberg Rallysprint driver Richard Weaver in car 61 who has competed at the event numerous times and he told us that a five minute stage time was the 'holy grail' to aim for at this event, but to achieve that it would need to be dry. 

Unfortunately, the road was drying but still very muddy in places for us. But, the car felt good and it was one of those stages where everything clicked. Mathew was spot on with the notes, the gear changes were slick and braking points felt just right on every corner. Mathew stopped the clock on five minutes dead at the end and the official time was 5.00.45. We were ecstatic. We had finished 4th fastest ahead of seven-time Belgium Champion Patrick Snijers in his Porsche 997 GT3. 

On the final stage, we took a conscious decision to get round and finish and so we backed off somewhat and the 13 seconds slower time than the previous run showed this. We had the Manx national rally in two weeks on the Isle of Mann and we didn't want any dramas beforehand. 

So in the end we finished ninth overall and had a fabulous weekend of motorsport. The whole community got involved with the rally and spectators were out in force. This is a fantastic event and one that will be in our memories for a long time - so we will definitely be back next year. 

Usual thanks must go to our sponsors DAF, F&G Commercials, Mirage Electronic Cigarettes, Sheffield Rolling Road, Quidbake, Signs Xtra, KHA Business Solutions. Also a big thanks to Alex Taylor of Northern Bodyshell Prep and Rachel Heel for the on-event support.

Monday 16 March 2015

Coming out on top despite a sticky situation with the gears

Melvyn Evans Motorsport Tour of Epynt Rally, Llandovery, Wales, March 7-8 2015


The Epynt Rally is known as the traditional season-opener for the MSA Asphalt Rally Championship and we were particularly keen to get started at this year’s event as we need to start defending our title as winners of the Group N class in 2014! As you’ll read, the rally was run over a nail-biting seven stages where every second counted – but we finished with a very pleasing end result, if not a complete gear lever ….

The Epynt Rally was based at the Castle Hotel in Llandovery and the route consisted of approximately 80 special stage miles over seven stages, with one central service area in a quarry on the Epynt military ranges.

Photo courtesy of 90right.com
We had a successful recce on the Saturday in glorious sunshine and were pleased with the day’s work and happy that our work in this area is improving. We returned to the Castle Hotel for noise check and scrutineering, and the car looked really well following a full re-spray and rebranding.

At the 6am start next morning, the sun had gone and we had a day of persistent rain, low cloud cover and very misty conditions ahead of us. However, we had a fantastic start on stage one finishing seventh overall and first in class - the very wet conditions suiting our car and Mathew very confident on the pace notes.

Midway into stage two, the yellow flags were out and we slowed down. Half a mile later we were stopped as the unfortunate car 43 had crashed out in a big way and destroyed their car. We waited for quite sometime to allow the medics to attend the driver and co-driver (who were both OK) and for the recovery team to remove the wreckage. We then drove the rest of the stage at normal speeds and received a nominal time, which put us down to 28th o/a and second in class, seven seconds behind the new leader.

Stage three and we set 11th fastest time which moved us up four places to 24th and gained five seconds on our class leader which meant only two second splitting us going into stage 4.

Stage 4 was a re-run of stage two, and this time we were 17th fastest and 20th O/a but, crucially, took nine seconds out of the class leader which now gave us a seven seconds lead with two stages remaining.

Stage five, we set an 8th fastest O/a remained at 17th O/a but took a massive 30 seconds out of our nearest class rival which gave us a 37 seconds lead going into the remaining two stages.

Stage six and conditions were drying however we decided to stay with the wets, which was the safe choice but probably the wrong one. We also snapped the gear lever! However, we managed to change gears with just the bottom 3 inches of what was left and only dropped three seconds as a result – remaining class leader and 17th O/a.

A confident run through stage seven -  albeit still with the broken gear lever – we set 15th fastest stage time which moved us up one place to finish the rally 16th overall but, more importantly, to win the group N class and get maximum championship points on the opening round of the championship.

We then had a short run back to the hotel and a quick interview with the nice people from special stage review and motoring news.

One last concern popped up, when the provisional results were posted and we were not on the list of finishers. But it transpired that there had been a mix up with the time sheets and the computer assumed we had gone over our time limit. The mistake was easily rectified and we were back on the final results and picked up a driver and co-driver award.

All in all, a great result – thanks again to the team and all our sponsors.

Friday 13 February 2015

Feeling flat at the unlucky 13th stage – but on a high at finish

Legend Fires Northwest Stages Rally, Blackpool, 6-7 January 2015

The Legend Fires Northwest Stages Rally is renowned as a tough one driven over a challenging 27 stages and, considering this was our first time at this prestigious event, we were happy with the result -  just missing out on a top 10 finish. But, as you’ll see from my ‘rally diary’ we could have secured a much higher placing if not for a couple of hiccups … here’s my view from the driving seat.

We were seeded 22nd going into the event and were raring to go when the mayor of Blackpool waved us off at the ceremonial start outside the Norbreck Castle Hotel.

First up was stage one’s eight mile drive in the dark to SS1 Weeton army barracks and although it wasn’t raining we opted for wet tyres as it was very cold and damp. We soon found our tyre pressures far too high though and dropped them for stage two which was a rerun of stage 1.

Stage three at Trax go-kart circuit brought us our first crowd-pleasing moment as it was extremely slippy and we went into the first corner far too fast. It was a scary moment really from inside the car but we seemed to make it look quite good as, with a quick tug on the handbrake, we hit the bollards on the merge and then took out a pile of tyres. Came out of it fine, apart from damaging the bumper and splitting our washer bottle.

Stage five and six were a one mile blast down Blackpool seafront ending with a series of hairpins in front of large crowds at a specially designed spectator area. We were delighted to be laying 7th overall at the end of the day and leg one - and were looking forward to next 22 stages.

The weather on leg two was forecast to be dry and we set of from the 45 minute service area on cut soft slick tyres heading to stages seven and eight at Lytham Hall. This stage started with two very long single track fifth gear straights through a twisty farmyard section onto a very muddy woodland and then back onto the tarmac in front of the hall before a long fast series of bends to the flying finish.
Back to Weeton barracks for stages 8 and 9, and very happy to post 7th fastest on both stages.
We arrived at the next two stages at the Docks to notice that all our tyres, especially the fronts, were completely shot.  Despite this, we were pleased and surprised to end up with a 7th and 6th fastest times in these stages.

But it was on the spectator stages at Fleetwood, where the poor condition of the tyres came to bear on the first pass through - we took the hairpin left at the boating lake really well but managed to puncture the front offside tyre. This slowed us down and we ended up 53th fastest which dropped us three places to 9th o\a.

Then things got much worse - we realised we hadn’t got a spare tyre in the boot. We’d decided not to carry a spare to save weight and as we had a chase car following us for support. However, we had just sent the mechanics in the chase car back to service to buy new tyres ready for our return to service. So we were stuck with that flat.

We therefore took the decision to drive stage 13 with a front offside puncture. This caused quite a lot of finger-pointing excitement from the spectators when we approached the start-line with a tyre that was flat and half off the rim. Yes we did know we had a flat thank you, but we were going to carry on anyway…

The car naturally under steered on the left corners and was a handful under braking. Nevertheless we got round and in total lost only 50 seconds on both stages.

Feeling quite pleased with that, we called the chase car to see how far off they were and were horrified to learn that they were still eight miles away. We instructed them to get to us as quickly as possible and drove towards them on the road section on the rim of the wheel as for as long as were dare without damaging the car. Three miles of that and we pulled up and waited.

We were relieved when they finally arrived and quickly changed the wheel and set off to service where a fresh set of soft slicks were waiting and, thankfully, road lateness had been extended.

We then had a short drive from service to SS14 and 15 Promenade 3 and 4 but here we took our second blow. Due to a co-driver error clocking the time we left service, we checked in one minute early on the first pass and two minutes early on the second which landed us with a three minute penalty and moved us down to 34th o\a.

We felt pretty despondent when we heard this news and Mathew was gutted, however we gave ourselves a talking to, pressed on and set some good times for the remainder of the event.

Stages 16 and 17 at Weeton army camp again went well and we set eighth fastest time and then third fastest at both runs through the Dock stages. Stages 20 and 21 were a run through the dunes at Fleetwood, where we set tenth and fifth fastest times.

On to a 25 minute service and then two runs through the Promenade stage, where we had a minor bump hitting a water butt on the second chicane and damaged our offside wing.  
A serious accident then prevented the second run through and both these stages were cancelled – our thoughts are with the drivers injured in this incident.

On to two further passes through the Lytham Hall stage and we were sixth fastest through both which pulled us back to 18th o\a.

The final two 5.6 mile stages a Weeton went very well - both were clean runs and we posted seventh on the first and fifth on the second which left us finishing the rally in 11th o\a.
We were happy with the result just missing out on a top 10 finish.  In the final analysis, we’ve worked out that without the puncture that lost us 50 seconds and the three minute time penalty, we would have finished fourth overall and first in class! Now that would have been something to celebrate and we are looking forward to next year already…

Thanks as usual to our sponsors F & G Commercials, DAF, Mirage Electronic Cigarettes, Quidbake, Method Racewheels, Forester Rallying and Sheffield Rolling Road.

And, it would be wrong not to mention and give thanks to all the people involved in making this event happen and in particular John Stone of Legend Fires as primary sponsor, Blackpool Council, the organising motor clubs and the many hundreds of marshals and volunteers. Congratulations to you all and we look forward to seeing you again next year.