RallyNuts Stages Rally 2022
After getting back in the car with Scott for the first time in 8 year on last year’s Rally Nuts stages and coming away with a podium finish, we both decided that this year we would take on a championship campaign with a full season of rallying in the Welsh Forests.
On Friday, we arrived in Builth Wells and collected our championship registrations cards and stickers for the car. We had registered for THREE championships so finding room for all the stickers on the car would be our biggest challenege for the day as the little Peugeot sailed through scrutineering with flying colours!
With the Lion’s Cup Peugeot Challenge, Welsh Rally Championship and IPS Rally Challenge stickers on the car, we parked her up in the overnight parking and headed for Burger King (who said rallying isn’t glamourous) to go through the pacenotes and plan for tomorrow’s stages. Whilst going through the notes and DVD we looked out the window… it was snowing! tomorrow was going to be very interesting!
Saturday morning had arrived, the nerves had kept both of us awake but we were ready and up for the challenge. The service crew had made some tweeks in the morning service and we were ready to go. No coffee required as the first stage would be the mammoth Myherin stage…
Sat on the start line, our biggest concern was how bad the road surface might be for the little Peugeot, being seeded right near the back we would have the worst road compared to the majority of our competitors, however, withing the first few hundred meters the road was perfect so I decided to bury my right foot and go for it!
Myherin was a great stage, one of the best I’ve ever driven. Everything just seemed to click from the word go. Towards the end up the stage, I could feel the brakes fading, so I backed off a little, however it still felt like a good stage and we were over 10seconds per km quicker than the previous year and on the pace of our more experienced rivals in quicker machinery!
Going into the Hafren Sweet Lamb stage it was very slippery at the start as it had just been hit by snow and hail, the road was also VERY rough in places so we had to back off or risk breaking the car. We were also still experiencing problems with the brakes after boiling them in SS1, however we were pleased to still be on the pace of our rivals.
It was then onto SS3, Cwmysgawen, a short but very nice flowing stage. The surface was in much better condiiton than Hafren Sweet Lamb so we decided to pick up the pace but still nursing the brakes.
We returned to the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells for the mid-day service, unfortunley we could not fix the brake issue but knew that we could manage it for the rest of the day. We were on target to claim some good points and then disaster struck!
On the way to the start line of SS4 I noticed the dreaded battery light on the dash… we arrived in the que for the start line and the car died… we had lost the aux belt and the battery was dead, game over! This was my first experience of a DNF and it wasn’t a nice feeling, we had all worked hard as a team and we were setting a good pace, we would have collected another podium but it wasn’t to be! Looking forward to the Nicky Grist Stages in July… this time with some decent brakes!
