The Total, a total disaster

Well i hoped it would come in 3's and that would be it, but i guess i put the mockers on it by saying it out loud.

The total international rally took place in Ermelo this last weekend, the event starting on thursday night with 2 super special stages. Dust played a major role in proceedings, and the 2nd stage was cancelled.

We went into day 2 3rd in class, we were immediately on the back foot when we realised we had a leaking front shock, seems like it broken on a bridge on the super special on which i was told we did some major low flying. With no time to change the shock we had to take on the first 2 stages of friday with the faulty part , we took it easy and surprisingly were right on the pace in any case. At the next service the shock was changed in 11 min, giving us 9 min to sip a cold drink!

the next set of 2 stages were a bit rougher , we slowly but surely got faster, catching the leaders in class . The third round of 2 stages were a repeat of the first 2 of the day, Allen gave it some welly on these stages and we took the lead in class A6 by 15 sec with one stage left in the day.

Stage 9 was a nightmare for most of us, with the setting sun and zero breeze the dust was ridiculous, you couldnt see more than a meter in front of the car, we over shot twice, the 2nd time the car struggled to start again! Salie du toit running on his old class N4 seeding had an advantage of having faster cars ahead of him was at less of a disadvantage and took 29sec out of us in the stage, leaving us 14 sec behind at the end of day 1.

it all came to an end 3.5km into the first stage of day 3, we hit a yump, and landed on an exposed rock, it snapped the rear shock off completely, Allen did well to keep the car from going over as the car flicked from one side to another! luckily no more harm was done, however our rally was over, very disappointing after such a promising day 2.

We will not be making the trip to PE for the next event, Allen has elected to do some extra work on the car, and we will be back for the Osram rally in Aliwal North, more from the national car then.