Last modified: 14/07/2002

No 39 Crew Service Crew

Peugeot 309 GTi 16v Aron Brown Andrew Mitchell George Cooke, Lawrence Fowler, Gareth Brown & Richard

This is the third time that Team Oranje Motorsport have attempted the Weston Park event and as usual it was a bloody early start on the Sunday morning to get to the venue for scruitineering.

For this event it was again the turn of Team B's Aron and Andy to take the hot seats. They had competed in the same event last year in the trusty Citroën Visa GTi and had achieved a reasonable position given that it was thier first event together.

It was hard to know who was the most nervous; was it George (Oh my god what am I doing letting somebody else drive my precious Rally Car!) Cooke, it wasn't too bad as he had a large supply of Silk Cut - just in case, or was it Andy (I must go to the toilet 20 times before we start!) Mitchell. Aron was apprehencious as it was a new car and it was left-hand drive, but felt confident as he new the track pretty well having driven it last year and having navigated for George at the same venu back in October last year. Once all the formalities were out of the way the rest of the team assembled in the Service Area and waited for the rally car to arrive.

The first stage's start was adjacent to the Service Area, Aron and Andy drew up to the start line. As usual, the start marshal had to run round the car to stamp the time card (why don't marshall's open their eyes!)

Helmets were on and harnesses fastened, the marshall gave us 20 seconds to start, then out of the corner of his eye Aron noticed the rest of the Team watching from the top of a hill. Right, he thought, I'll show the cheeky blighters: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Go! Lots of wheel spin off the line, up the hill, hold it in second, round the slight left hander and floor it, into third.... where's bloody third, no thats fifth (d'oh!).

The rest of the stage took on the appearance of a convoy as when we reached the waterspash a Historic Cortina GT had drowned out in the water and cars were stacking up behind it. As the rest of the cars completed the remainder of the stage in convoy, it was interesting going round hairpins together, the 309's handbrake was put to good use again and again - Andy thought it was very entertaining and could'nt read the map through laughing!

Stages 2 & 3 were completed with no problems and Aron started to feel a lot more confident with the car and the stage times refected this. At Service prior to SS4, the boys fitted a rear anti-roll bar and the car was significantly more stable on high speed corners. After the lunchtime service halt the track was reversed and Andy and Aron set off for SS6 in a confident mood, and felt they could go quicker in the afternoon - they were to go no further! The short driveshaft snapped between changing from first to second off the start line, all Aron and Andy could do was to coast down the the hill and pull up where it was safe to do so, away from the other cars.

It was a sad end to a so far enjoyable day, our thanks go to the ever faithfull Lawrence, and also Cal, Gareth (Aron's brother) and his friend Richard who are all new members to the Team and especially to George for letting us use his car and would like to say oops! sorry George.