Been a busy few months so a couple of updates over the next week or so to bring us up to date... May and the start of June was our holiday and Rally Barbados..
First weekend of hillclimb went OK - safe but not quick enough against the quick boys in our class.
Then a week of pacenoting, spanner checking, enjoying the island and mainly drinking rum we got to the main event.
Friday started steadily until we had a big spin under braking a few miles in which shook me up and killed my confidence in the car on the night stage..
Think we were 8th in our class and 59th overall going into Saturday. We did a swap of tyres from inters on the front and cut wets on the back to softs on the front and wets on the back.
Saturday was a mixture of technical stages with some fast bits thrown in. Had a bad start in the morning with brakes boiling badly so had to bleed and refill them on the road section from stage 3 to stage 4 and from stage 4 to stage 5 but got that sorted and started to work our way up. However the car didnt feel "right" all day with a loose back end meaning it was difficult to commit to the faster bumpy bits. Had an 80mph spin in the road with only a tiny bump into a bank at the end which was extremely lucky! However, finished the day 5th in class and 39th overall.
Then onto Sunday. Thought it was going to rain, so tyre swapped to inters front and softs rear for the first loop which was the wrong choice as it didnt rain and the inters were too soft leading to major understeer. So we changed to some mediums on the front and kept the softs on the rear after the first loop. The car immediately felt "good" again allowing me to push much harder and was around 2-3 seconds a mile quicker and certainly the best it had been all rally. Throughout the day, we did our own thing and pushed where we could but backed off when it got lairy. In the meantime, others were throwing themselves off the road.. So we worked up to 4th in class then up to 3rd in class and ended the rally 32nd overall and 3rd in class.
On the basis that the 2 cars ahead of us in our class were Citroen DS3 R3 Max cars which are going for around 70K Euro at the moment with sequential boxes, works type suspension etc, then I dont think the Astra did too badly all in all. It was also a learning curve on the tyres so will be better in 2019!
Had 4 days after the rally to chill out, drink some more and enjoy the island and friends out there. Luckily we have a great partner in the Coconut Court Beach Hotel who help us whenever we are at the rally - http://www.coconut-court.com is highly recommended if anyone is looking for a great hotel in Barbados
Next post will be about the Flying Fortress rally in June in the other car!
Paul..