Rallye Jean De la Fontaine, May 2011
New colours for the new year.
First race meeting in France in 2011, the curse of 2010 had been lifted.
2nd Overall
New format at JDLF this year – 2 days reccee (Thursday and Friday) Scrutineering Friday pm/Saturday am – 1st Car out of Parc Fermee about 10.30 Saturday
Twelve Stages over the two days (4 stages each run 3 times)
Saturday we were car no 23, off the line after Voisin not a bad position to be in as there was no re-classification during the day, our times were very competative getting scratch on ES3, at the end of Saturday we were leading the rally, with Favy 8 seconds behind us. Should have been 18 seconds, but I missed my check-in minute so got a 10 second penalty. Whoops!
Sunday – scary being the first car on the road ment I had no-one to follow, my usual navigating pattern is to find the 5 cars in front of us, jot them down check out their navigators and stick to them like glue, so that I don’t miss anything!
After rain ES 7 was slippy, and the tarmac like glass, on nobbly tyres, Favy took a 6 seconds out of us but we were still leading, ES 8 Favy got another 6 seconds on us, so hopped into the lead, we scratched ES 9 getting the lead back again by just 0.4seconds, ES 10 a puncture slowed us down and we lost 5 seconds, Favy took the lead again, ES11 two punctures loosing another 8 seconds, ES12 back on the nobblies no chance of catching Favy now, just need to keep ahead of Steph.
Final Result 1st Favy, 2nd Rick & Sandra, 3rd Steph & Rachel – Two Brits on the podium – what a finish!
Fortunately for me we were 29.6 seconds behind Favy at the finish – imagine if it was under 10 seconds!
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
Filed under: Racing in France on June 15th, 2011
