2004 BTRDA Silkoline 1400 Championship

Round 4 - Somerset Stages & Round 5 - Red Dragon Stages

Report by Gavin Bristow and Matt Brennan, Photographs by Simon Clarke (www.sc-photography.co.uk)

BTRDA Silkoline 1400 Round 4, 24th April:- Somerset Stages

Round 4 of the BTRDA series took us down to the somerset stages in Minehead and 10 stages through the fast flowing forests of Exmore national part also including 2 tarmac stages consisting of 4.5 mile blast up Porlock toll road.

Somerset Stages

The first stage was on gravel a good 6 mile stage to get us in to the swing of things and we passed through with no problem, that was until on the way back to service the trip meter decided to stop working which at the next service stop turned out to be a complete smashed hand brake assembly that had taken the wheel speed sensor with it….oh well Mat, good luck with the road sections!!

On with some tarmac rubber and we were off up to Porlock for 2 back to back blasts up the toll road. These stages were excellent fun with just about every type of bend that is available for description in the pace notes making the stage very challenging and also very exciting and satisfying to drive. During the runs we were clocked as being the 2nd fastest through the speed trap @ 84mph out of the 1400’s and were placed 10th in B9 with 9 stages still to go!

Another service took place for some forest tyres and we were off for another 5 stages in the forests ranging from a short 2 mile blast to a good 9 miler that allowed us to get in the groove.

The car was working well but did seem to go off and the next service showed why….our new Maxsport rubber has as good as gone and we were reduced to something more resembling a circuit slick!

To get us through the rest of the day we threw on some part warns and got on with the job in hand. The rest of the day went without incident, we knackered another set of front tyres in the process but managed to bring the car home 7th in B9 8th in the 1400’s out of 48 starters and 59th Overall out of 93 finishers from 159 starters our best result so far this season.

BTRDA Silkoline 1400 Round 3, 22nd May:- Red Dragon Stages

Round 5 of the BTRDA series took us to south Wales and the aptly named Red Dragon Stages based in Swansea.

Red Dragon Stages

Following our bad experience with Maxsport tyres on the previous outing we opted to try some different rubber on this all gravel event from Silverstone Competition Tyres. I had also made some changes to the suspension set up on the car so we were hoping for some better grip and handling characteristics. The event was a complete contrast from the previous consisting of only 6 long stages and 2 service stops, these are the types of stages that myself and Mat prefer as it allows us to get in to a rhythm and we were looking forward to the challenge ahead! The forest areas that we covered included Resolven, Crynant and 2 runs through the Walters Areas spectator area, all stages used on the Rally GB last year.

Stages 1 & 2 went without hitch and the car was performing well with the tyres feeling much better in pretty much every respect! The only scare we had was the rather rapid approach to an accident that has just taken place in front of us that saw us just able to slow down enough in time not to hit them and get through with minimal time lost. You never know what’s going to be around the next bend in the forest! Going in to the first stages we were running 9th in class and hoping to improve as the day went on. Stages 3& 4 themselves went without problem once again but we made a mistake between the stages entering a time control early and incurring a 3 minuet penalty! A group of us had got a bit lost in the dust due to some unclear notes between the stages and we thought we were late approaching the time control, we realised we were still early just as we entered the control and backed up but the tight time keeper still gave us the penalty…..Oh well rules are rules…..we are still learning. We continued to push for the rest of the day with the car performing faultlessly, the only real problems we encountered for the rest of the day was the heat & dust as we seemed to be catching the runner in front of us over the long stages. This made some areas really tricky basically just driving on the notes….and hoping!!

At the end of the day in pure stages times we would have finished 6th place in B9 and 6th out of the 1400’s again our best result to date and another step in the right direction. With our penalty we ended up finishing 9th in B9 and 9th out of the 1400’s from 45 starters, 102nd Overall from 180 starters.

Our next event is on the 23rd June the Dukeries Stages based in Mansfield near Nottingham, hopefully we will be trying a new plate diff for this event so maybe with some extra traction we can go one better! We will be there trying our best!