John Cope/Rob Fagg Car 4
This year was a bit of a disaster ………….
Preparations we not perfect with Rob only arriving on the island on the Wednesday, having to travel back from Canada, where he leads the Canadian Championship with 2 rounds to go.
I traveled up to the island as usual on the Saturday beforehand to do a comprehensive recce before the event. Grateful thanks go to Dave Hopwood for sitting in while Rob came over. Last minute preparations on the car were still taking place having had to re-build the gearbox and rear diff before the event. But the car arrived on Wednesday all ready to go ......
Couple of minor changes and modifications to the suspension setup prior to the start left me feeling confident for the first leg ......
The only decision to make prior to the start was tyres, and with a clear dry night in prospect I opted for a medium slick.
Just 2.1 miles into the first stage on the way up to the hairpin by the graveyard on the Lochs section of the stage the car snapped out on the right hander to the hairpin approach and before I could fully collect it we went up the bank and the front offside hit a large rock destroying the wheel, disc and bent the wishbone back. With the tyre hard up against the inner wing that was game over and we retired on the spot. It was another 4 hours before the boys could recover the car and it was then we were able to establish there was no chance of re-joining under the super rally rules.
So that left us to go out on the Saturday afternoon for some brilliant spectating, when we took out the newly acquired speed gun to check out the cars. On White Line Crest it was the Focus of Peter Taylor who was doing 93 mph and over the Lochs John Macrone was clocked at 109 mph on the approach the the bridge after just after mid stage.
Rhys was celebrating his 21st Birthday on Saturday so we opted to have a meal in town rather than spectate in the evening..........
So that was the end of another year ..... but thanks go to all the team for another effort - Dean of Geoprep, Andy, Richy, Ben, Tony, Rhys and Rob for sitting in with me.
The Holy grail remains just that. One year, maybe!
John
Tunnocks Mull Rally 2013 Report
