Last modified: 14/07/2002

No 33 Crew Service Crew

Peugeot 309 GTi 16v George Cooke Alan West Lawrence Fowler / Colin Scott

Round 1 of the AAT Heart of England Championship

Having spent the previous evening working on Lawrence's Toyota road car trying to diagnose a gearbox / driveshaft noise and then driving around various country pubs, I awoke at 4am with a shock, but not as much as Lawrence who had been drinking in all the pubs the previous evening and was feeling worse for ware.

As Aron, in the Astra , and I were doing the same event we had decided to share a single van and one trailer so Lawrence and I pushed the rally car out of the garage to avoid waking the neighbours at home and then we all rendezvous at Arons for the drive up the A5 to Weston Park

At Weston Park we met up with Chris Rose a new service crew member who we had contacted via the internet after he posted an advert looking for experience of servicing on rally cars (what a fool)

Weston Park service area was very wet and things did not bode well for the day when the service van sank in the mud and new boy Chris had to use his trials Landrover to pull it out.

I took the 309 to noise were it passed easily and then on to scrutineering where I met up with Alan, my navigator, for the event. 

As the weather appeared dry and the venue was supposed to be tarmac, and we did not have very much choice, I decided to set out for the first stage using a set of slightly cut Colway F2s we had used with some success on the Isle of Man.

On to the First Stage, starting using traffic lights was novel for a single venue, but being in a left hand drive car I was unable to see the lights so Alan had to count down. Through the first chicane everything appeared ok, but after that we managed to slide into almost every chicane and at the fifth corner managed to lock up 50 yards out of a 90 right through some gates. Narrowly avoiding hitting a tree we hit the straw bales between the tree and a gatepost. By the time we had reversed out and driven through the watersplash to the end steam was emanating ominously from the front of the 309! On the road section to the first service frantic calls to the service crew, over the radio, to get the spare radiator, hoses and all available water proved to be a false alarm when the damage was just two buckled front wings.

Second stage faired little better numerous offs and a collision with a straw bale at a junction resulting in the arrow dropping onto the drivers side of the windscreen obscuring view.

By stage three the intercom had developed terrible feedback resulting in the crew having to run without it and shout very loudly. This proved difficult because of the numerous bouts of laughter caused by leaving the road at every opportunity.

Stage four the position of no grip was getting worse because of mud being pulled onto the stage by competitors going off onto the grass and therefore it was decided to change to the only other tyres we had with us a set of 4 very worn Yokohama A033's. This improved the grip significantly, but the conditions still enabled the car to leave the road on a number of 'off-roading' manoeuvres. 

For the last two stage the organisers decide to stop running the loop through the ford and therefore we are able to enjoy two high speed runs through the stages without lapsing onto three cylinders!

Commiserations to Aron and rally virgin Nikki for breaking a driveshaft in the ford on stage 4.

Thanks to Alan for being brave enough to yet again sit with me and for seeing the funny side of numerous agricultural moments and thanks to new guy Chris, Colin from Cadbury's and Lawrence for efficient servicing in difficult conditions.