A brief report from the first, non-championship, event.

It was wet

The site was a tank proving ground near Farnham, it was obviously tough on tanks as Gary came back with a piece of broken tank track! Encouraging.

The course was 3.5 miles of sand, mud, water, trees. I hit quite a lot of trees.

There were large wide sand tracks with very big ponds in which turned to quick sand with all the cars churning them up. Generally these were taken at speed but some of the undulations could launch the car with a bit of a tilt.

Then there were the forest sections which varied from hair pin / axle twister type stuff taken in first gear to rally car style sections taken with reasonable gusto.

First run. The mud was sufficient to completely block my vision to the right and I was relying on my new navigator (Gary) to call the corners, as we were both learning on this event, some trees were encountered. About 2.5 miles in the front right tyre got knocked off the rim on a submerged rock on a fast corner but the Amazon tyre stayed on the wheel despite being driven flat out. We came in with a time towards the slower end of the spectrum but still quite respectable, about 14 minutes...

As I only carried one spare, it would be the wrong side that went! So run two commences with a directional tyre in the wrong direction. Still, traction was good but the course was getting impassable in places and we had to be recovered twice (you know you are stuck when the wheels spin in drive even when you are at idle). Another hard tree encounter adjusted the passenger door and trimmed off the mirror, which Gary noted.

Third run went badly when I ran out of tyres.

Still the pits were nice.

All in all, the vehicle proved very capable, I need to improve the vision to the right and redo the doors more securely but it was a damn good day out.

The course was very challenging, many cars retired with broken bits (half shafts etc) or water logged electrics but it was never the less a very good event and the organizers did a splendid job.

© Ralph Hosier 2004