This event is based in Newark, Nottinghamshire the Rally HQ, Signing On, Start and Finish are all at the Racecourse. Last years event was a virtual wash out with heavy rain causing some parts of the racecourse to flood.

I was teaming up with Brendan Wellman on this rally in a Citroen C2, which he was hiring from the Rallyschool.
Brendan normally competes in his Micra Kitcar contesting the 1400 class, due to having a run of bad luck so far this season Brendan decided to hire a car, as his Micra was not ready.

I set off on the Friday aiming to be up in Newark by roughly 4pm. Brendan together with his fiancee Sarah plus his Dad were travelling from Chard, Somerset. When I arrived at the Racecourse it was now raining quite heavily, you will not need two guesses to know who had forgotten to pack their coat (Silly Girl)! Luckily for me there were some chaps who let me shelter in their van, they were the lovely Saxo Rally Team of Steve, Mark & Crew.... Cheers boys.

With some time to pass I had a walk around, I had a chat with Rich, who brings Damian Coles Rally Car to events then services it for him, I was telling him I had left my coat at home, he kindly lent me his for the event it was very much appreciated, thank you Rich.

Brendan arrived so we made our way over to the Rallyschool Unit, they were running 4 cars altogether on this event. I had a look around the car, then John from Rallyschool said we could take if through Scrutineering which we did, this gave Brendan the chance to drive the car, because he had not had anytime to do so before, on to Noise check passed ok... then it was on to "Scrutineering" by now I was thinking will I be seeing that gorgeous Cornish guy!!! Mr Cooper where were you, disappointed now as you were not on this rally, so I had to have the lovely Dave look after me instead, that's it now Mr C you have got a lot of catching up now, see you on the Quinton.

If I dare describe it as such I thought the car was very "CUTE" the seats were lovely, we were now really looking forward to Saturday our Start number being 206.

On to the Premier Lodge which had been pre booked by the Rallyschool in total there was 20 of us, I was sharing a room with Gemma Wheeler who this year is driving a Ford Focus through the Rallyschool, her dad Clive was also competing in the other C2 through the Rallyschool they are also contesting the BTRDA 1400 Championship.

I also met up with Darren Pinchin and Rob Leigh who are currently leading the 1400’s in the BTRDA Championship driving their Proton Satria during a brief chat with them I discovered they were also staying at the Premier Inn, so after arranging to catch up over a drink later, they went on their way.

After the poor Receptionist had booked us all in, we set about looking for our rooms, it turned out we almost needed a map just to get to it, we were convinced the room was the furthest away, some of the other crews were on the same floor, Brendan and Sarah had the adjacent room with some of the Service boys a little further down.

John had booked part of the restaurant for 21.30 the poor waiter didn't know what had hit him he started off with taking our orders at this point myself and Brendan were at the Bar and then got chatting to Darren and Rob and their service crew. Sarah orders for us and we continued chatting Sorry Rob... I could not resist including the following, during my conversation with Darren, Rob was ordering meals for the 4 of them and paid by card..now the embarrassing thing was he could not remember his pin number, which caused great amusement for us and the more he tried, the more we laughed finally after trying a number of different cards he got it right, turning a fetching colour of PINK suited you Rob.

Saturday

At the start we got chatting to some of the other front runners while we waited for the rally to start. At last it was time to set off to the first stage which was only a short one SS1 Watchwood 1 just 1.18miles. We got our arrival time, helmets on belts tightened and then we pulled upto the start line 5,4,3,2,1 Go! Off we set but we were not far into the stage when Brendan seems to be having problems with the gears we managed to get to the end of the stage, then the low oil pressure light came on so we pulled up, then it went off again so we thought we would carry on to SS2 Blidworth 1 which was a 2.31miler, less than a mile into the stage we were going round a SQL when the car cut out Brendan managed to get it going again but we both agreed something was wrong with the car, we put the hazards on and free wheeled to the next junction pulled off and that was it end of our rally, I felt so disappointed for Brendan he really has had a bad year.

It was now a case of just waiting, initially to be towed out of the stage, then wait for the boys to come and recover the car, conveniently placed just down the road was a nice pub, so we went and drowned our sorrows and had a very nice meal, not really how I like my rallies to go but never mind.

Thanks to Paul Smith Photography for managing to get some pictures of us, as we had only manage to complete just over 2 miles. You can view more of Paul's pictures at www.paulsmithphotography.co.uk