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Browns Builders (Mull) Crail
A beautiful sunny summer morning, no trace of the usual Crail wet and slimy for the first two stages conditions, and folk wishing they had brought sun screen instead of the sou'' westers.
The rally was dominated by Steven Hogg / Kirsty McDonald who were fastest on 7 of
the 8 stages in their Impreza, but dropped nearly two minutes on SS6 after bursting
two tyres in the crater that had opened up during the day where the dung-heap used
to be.
The chasing pack was led by Bruce Edwards / Jim Smith in the Darrian-Honda T9, finally benefitting from the warm
dry start that two-wheel drive needs at Crail, so they said thank you very
much and won by 27 seconds. Hogg held on to second, just in front of Bob Grant and Pete Carstairs.
With youngest son Nicky on the maps, John was second to Steven Hogg on the first stage, then it all went pear shaped. Ground to a standstill on SS2 with no gears, got out and opened the bonnet, found a clip come off the linkage to the turret, shoved it into gear, back in the car and away, and the bonnet opened and smashed the screen. [Sympathy - hands up everybody that''s been there, done that.~ Ed]. Lost well over a minute on that stage.
They carried on, with some strategically placed tank tape on the screen, tried hard, blootered a few tyres, pulled back a few seconds here and there, but not enough to make much difference, and finished 5th Overall.
Seem to have had a trouble-free run to finish 3rd overall, only 3 seconds behind Hogg /McDonald.
Ross was on a charge, which is his default mode, but on stage 4, at an open hairpin left near the Crail village corner, he clipped a tyre and rolled heavily. It''s a very strong well built car, but every panel is damaged.
Very good weekend had by all at BMM-Motorsport.com and we are all delighted with our result.
Stage 1: went ok apart from the driver being half asleep and having to half reverse through one of the ****** tight chicanes!! (10th o/a)
Stage 2: Alls good, but still no sign of rain!!(7tho/a)
Stage 3: Again good run and still no sign of rain!!(6th o/a). Stuart M not feeling at all well and struggling to keep down his breakfast!
Stages 4: A good run on this one and we moved up to 4th overall by the half way point. But the rain dance still having no effect.
Stage 5: A good run with no real problems to speak of, lunch had settled well for me but Mr Millar was a different story!! (see pile of vomit at the end of stage!!)
Stage 6: The car cut out for about 10-15 seconds when going over a very deep hole at the back of the stage and we had to try lots of wiggling wires, switches etc before it fired back to life again. We were also held up slightly by Steven Hogg at one of the chicanes. He had a double puncture, caused by the same deep hole where we cut out. So things could have been much worse.
Stage 7: We noticed that we had a very loose wheel bearing at the front drivers side and didn''t have the parts to fix it so made a decision to back off as we didn''t think we could catch those in front of us and we had nearly a minute gap back to 5th. So driving like a Granny was the story of this stage.
Stag
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