Pirelli Rally Friday

The opening round of this years BRC & BRC Challenge turned into a nightmare for the Ti team. The early promise shown by Matt Cotton in the R2 came to nothing with a fuel pump failure in the 3rd of the Friday nights 4 stages. The crew were left stranded about a mile from the end of the stage. For once there was some limited phone service so we were able to get to the end of the stage to collect them. Choosing Stefan's Golf estate for the rescue mission we were sat at the end of stage when a couple of rescue vehicles came out and told us that our car was on its way but might be a while because of another accident. We opted to make our way into the stage to try to speed thing up as it was by now about 11 o'clock. Sure enough everyone was stuck while the rescue boys pulled out another competitor. While this was going on we had a quick look at the car. No fuel to the injector rail. Before too long the rescue crews had everything sorted & were following them out of the stage when the Golfs oil light came on.

BIG BLO*** HOLE IN SUMP!!!!!!!!!. Much cursing, swearing & jumping up & down in anger later & we had an interesting predicament. All the recovery vehicles had gone & we had no phone signal & a stricken rally car as well as the Golf to get back to Carlisle. Mechanic super star Len Davies headed off to the end of the stage in the hope of catching the recovery crew while they were unhooking the C2R2 & luckily he just made it. So that solved one problem, it got the Golf onto the 'main' road.

Only thing to do was to phone Stefan & Tony & get them to come & collect us so that we could go & collect the trailers to get the cars back. While we waited we managed to get the C2 going so were able to get Matt & Anthony back to Carlisle under there own steam while we waited for Tony & Stefan.

While we were waiting a strategy evolved Andy Tearle would collect a trailer & return to collect the  the Golf & Jim Daniels who would stay with the car. Meanwhile Len & myself would fix the C2 ready for Super Rally on Saturday. It even worked & by 4.45am the Golf was back at service & the C2 was ready to fight another day. The service crew eventually got to their digs at 5 am with a restart at 6.30.