I thought the most hectic part of the year was over when we had won Yorkshire, but little did I know, that was only the beginning.
Obviously there has been a constant stream of interviews, mostly done over the phone, I might add. Then of course we won the Pirelli Star drive and all the while I was in the thick of negotiations with Pro Car and Pirelli over the possibility of doing Scotland in an S2000.
Then, last week we were at the BRC Bash, the annual prize giving awards night and it was fantastic to be there and to meet all the competitors that we had battled with during the year, without having the pressure of doing a rally at the same time. We all had a fantastic night and I have to thank all the Irish Supporters who travelled over for the evening to show their support. The organisers also have to be commended for their Irish theme on the night.
It was a fantastic evening and will be remembered forever by the Cronin and Shinnors families and I would think, by all the supporters who attended.
We had only arrived home when we had to fly to Tuscany in Italy to test the Abarth Punto that we will be using in Scotland. As I have not driven a naturally aspirated car since 2006 and had never used a sequential gearbox, it was a steep learning curve.
To make matters worse, the weather could only be described as HORRENDOUS!
Living in West Cork I would be accustomed to heavy rainfall, however, I have never before witnessed rain like we had on the test stage! I don’t think anybody could have gone faster that 60kph without pacenotes as the sheer volume of rainfall reduced visibility so much.
Another factor that was new to me was ‘flat-shifting’, where there is no need to de-celerate or lift from the accelerator when changing gear. This also takes quite a bit of getting used to and for me, seem to be unnecessarily hard on the car, but I suppose they are built to take that abuse.
Although the test was shortened because of the weather, I have to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly but I will find it difficult to be on the pace in this car as there are so many new factors. The car is, however much more stable than the Mitsubishi on corners although that brings its own problems in so far as it is difficult to know how far you can push before you lose grip. In the Evo, you can feel the car start to go and adjust accordingly but, in the Abarth, the car feels very steady until you reach the limit of the traction and then it just breaks away from you, giving no time to react.
I have no doubt that we will have an ‘interesting’ rally and hopefully we can get some more test miles on the car maybe on Wednesday evening.
The other top competitors have many kilometres of rallying and testing done this year, so I need to add to the 35km in Italy before I can expect to be on their pace!
Meanwhile this will be a big weekend for Derry O’Brien from Bantry as he will be sitting in with me for the Kerry Mini Stages, courtesy of winning first prize in the recent Supporters Club draw.