Nicky Grist Stages ‘22

After a three month break we headed back to Wales for our second stage rally of the season, The Nicky Grist Stages.

Back in Builth Wells again but this time with the service park based on the local Rugby Pitch, Saturday would feature two loops of iconic Wales Rally GB Stages - Llyn Login, Monument, Halfway and Crychan. I still have to pinch myself with those last two…. they’re stages that I have fond memories of from spectating at Wales Rally GB over the years but I’ve never never rallied them myself!

The car was prepped by Ignition Motorsport before the event and all ready to go, a great job repairing what turned out to be a broken tensioner bracket that ended our rally last time out in April. We would also be joining the Ignition service crew for the weekend with good friends and fellow Craven Motor Club members, Colin Minton and Bryan Hull competing in the Ignition Motorsport Ford Fiesta R5.

Arriving in Builth on Friday it started to sink in that this was going to be a steep learning curve on stages that I’d never competed on before with little time to prepare and no seat time in the car since we retired on the Rally Nuts Stages. I’d watched a few onboard videos from the safety DVD but not as much as I would have liked.

As I started to stick the melting numbers of “117” on the Peugeot I released that the heat would play a huge factor in the following day’s competition along with the inevitable dust and tyre wear.

A quick hop over the road to the local Toyota dealership where we joined the que for scrutineering, a simple task apart from the car cutting out and refusing to restart! Thankfully it eventually fired back into life but we knew there was a problem. The Ignition crew quickly identified and fixed an issue with the ECU’s 12v supply and we were ready for Saturday morning’s stages.

The following morning we had some time to go through the safety DVD and notes once more before heading out to SS1, Llyn Login - a short 3.5mile stage. I didn’t go flat out from the start and decided to ease myself and the car in, now wasn’t the time to break something and retire again! The feeling in the car was good on the loose sections, I had much more grip than I had anticipated but lost a lot of time locking up and understeering into some tight hairpins. I knew we could go much quicker through here in the afternoon.

Onto SS2 another fairly short 4mile stage, starting off quite wide and flowing and ending in a narrow more technical section which had become quite rough already, unfortunately we managed to pull the exhaust off the car in the ruts but thankfully we didn’t lose it altogether. We lost a bit of power but both happy to get through with no major dramas and a decent time. At the end of the stage we repaired the exhaust as best we could and moved onto SS3.

On arrival of the iconic Halfway stage we were stopped on the start line.. a knock on the window from a scrutineer, follow by “switch it off, sorry boy’s your day is over”… I hung my head in disbelief… NOT AGAIN! We were refused entry into the stage on noise and safety grounds… both GUTTED that our rally had come to an end after just two stages and 7.5miles of competition we returned to service where we would attempt to restart the rally in SS5 and take a penalty hit for missing SS3 & 4.

The Ignition crew repaired the car to get us back out under “Super Rally” for the remaining afternoon loop of 4 stages. A great job by the whole team, this meant we could still collect some good points and gain some more valuable seat time!

We retuned to Llyn Login (SS5) with not a lot to play. We had been given an hour in penalties for the two stages that we missed, all we could do was get to the end and try to recover some championship points. No need for heroics, just finish!

I found it difficult to find the right balance between getting to the end and making the most of the mileage we had left… in the first few miles that was confirmed by a sideways moment that sent us into a ditch almost ending our day for good! Thankfully I managed to recover it and from that moment I decided to push a little harder through the rest of the stage and SS6 that followed.

Onto SS7, our first time though Halfway. Finally we would get to drive this iconic stage…. sat on the start line at Dixies Cross Roads I had a vivid memory of Kris Meeke batting a Mini WRC down the same section of road in 2012, this time I wasn’t stood up on the bank spectating, I was behind the wheel! This was a very enjoyable 5miles of classic Welsh gravel roads, everything started to click in this stage but unfortunately this meant that we caught up with the car in front and sat in their hanging dust cloud for most of the stage.

The day was nearly done and dusted (no pun intended) and It was definitely a case of saving the best ‘till last, SS8 Crychan - What a stage! We were both absolutely drained going into this stage, the heat and dust (lots of it now making it’s way into the car) was getting to us however this would be my favorite stage. I just wish we’d ben able to drive it in the morning too!

We are pleased with our performance and very glad we got a finish but still gutted to take a maximum 1hour time on two stages, we could have easily been in the fight for 2nd in class based on our afternoon loop times but we managed to recover some valuable championship points by finishing 3rd in class in the Welsh Rally Championship which puts us just 5 points from 2nd place in our class.

We are looking forward to the next stage rally, the Woodpecker on the 3rd September and hoping to get a test arranged between now and then. Before that we will hopefully be back in the MG ZR for the Hatsford Targa, currently 3d reserve driver so wish us luck that we get a run!