Never having competed in Donegal before, I was in awe of some of the Classic stages and was looking forward to having a good 'crack' at them. Friday evening , though, was always intended to be an evening of familiarisation, both with the car and the countryside.

Everything started well enough when on the first stage we were 3rd fastest, having been beaten only by the 2 WRC cars in front. Confident that better was in store for us as we left the start line of Stage 2 the Turbo decided that it had enough! As anyone with experience of Turbo failure can explain the resulting power is similar to a Honda '50', so we hobbled to the stage finish and into service to solve the problem.

The JRM engineers managed to change the Turbo, but we were still unable to verify if that was definitively the problem, however, we eventually left service incurring 1.5min in penalties.

On the following 2 stages the car was not responding properly and it was eventually discovered that a software problem was preventing the proper functioning of the car.

Over the next 2 stages we think we have isolated the problem and hopefully it can be rectified at first service in the morning!!

I must say that the JRM team have been extremely helpful in relation to the problems and hopefully they will be rectified tomorrow.

A new day and hopefully a new beginning!