Travelling to the Pirelli British Rally
shootout 2 weeks ago I was not very confident of our chances, given the fact that we had not progressed from 2 shootouts in the previous year. This probably helped me to relax before the event as I was not expecting too much from the occasion.

This may well have worked in my favour, as I had not driven a two wheeled drive car since 2006 but seemed to settle in to it straight away and we were only beaten by one other driver. As Alaister Fisher was driving the 4WD car, the Pirelli car which Adam Gould had driven all year, the rear diff went and we all had to drive Mark Higgins' car instead. Although this did require a different driving style from the Mitsubishi, I thought that the car was really good, especially in the lower rev range. We were fastest of all the finalists in this car and I went on to win the Pirelli Star Driver. What can I say?
This was just a fairytale year from beginning to end!
Anyway, we were just home from the Pirelli Shootout in Sweet Lamb when we began thinking of Rally Scotland and we began to see that we had nothing to gain, realistically, from doing that event in a regular Group N car. We began to make enquiries about hiring an S2000. The first few calls we made were not encouraging as the figures being quoted were unrealistic. However the possibility of a realistic deal then appeared when we spoke to Procar about an Abarth Grande Punto.
Much of this was going on during the past week when I was at Rally GB, driving a representative of ABU DHABI tourism on behalf of the Ford team and my phone bill will probably be high!!
Although this deal still seemed beyond our reach, Pirelli then came aboard to make the whole thing possible and it has taken a couple of weeks since to get the entire package finalised! I cant wait for the rally!!
This weekend we have to travel to Warrington to the 'BRC BASH', the official prizegiving of the British Rally Championship. Afterwards we will be flying to Tuscany in Northern Italy to undertake a brief test in the Abarth Grande Punto. We have only negotiated a 40km test session and as there is no shakedown on Rally Scotland the first days stages on Rally Scotland will effectively still be a testing session. We would hope to be putting in more competitive times by the time the rally finishes.

P.S. Must get a laptop for updates as I never seem to get to my PC!