BRC Stars of the Future 2005

Round 2 of the BRC Stars of the Future championship took Mat Brennan and myself to Carlisle and the Pirelli international. Most of the rally took place in the notoriously fast and traitorous man made forests of Kielder, the Interceptor racing crew were up for the challenge following the class win in Wales and were looking to do that same again.

The bid to emulate the first round performance in the BRC stars of the future was short lived though as disaster struck on stage 1. From the beginning of the stage the handling of the car fell wrong with the front end wondering over the crowned dirt track surface and the rear end un predictably stepping at high speed making it hard to push.

We continued to try and push driving around the problems but our luck ran out on a fast right left section, the rear end of the car sliding as if the handbrake had been pulled dropping a wheel in to the right hand ditch, that slide was recovered momentarily by keeping the throttle fully berried but the subsequent line and momentum threw the car towards the deep ditch on the other side of the narrow track smashing across a pile of large rocks which flipped the car in to the ditch and landed us rubber side up! Gutted!

Once again we had the not so pleasant feeling of hanging upside down made even worse this time by the fact that we could see running water passing by the windscreen and no way out on Mats side of the car….a swift exit was made via the driver’s door at this point!

The car was damaged but looked mechanically sound, a very enthusiastic crowed managed to get us back on or wheels quite quickly but the deep Kielder ditches proved to be the biggest obstacle to overcome.

Eventually with enough hands we managed to get the car out and tried to continue the rally finishing the stage. We still had 4 wheels, 5 gears and an engine that was keen to continue but the handling and brakes were shot. During the Auxiliary service we found that the rear n/s brake calliper had snapped off the bean and had been jamming in the rear wheel, to get us moving we locked of the brake line and managed to get the wheels pointing in the right direction so that we could attempt the next stage. We complete the stage but the car was dangerous to drive at any kind of pace and by this time we were over our time limit which led to our subsequent retirement.

A very disappointing event after the success of the 1 round of the BRC stars of the future but we vowed to be there fighting at round 3 the Scottish Rally.

Gavin Bristow