Wow Wow Wow and Sensational

Get yourself a cup of coffee before reading any further.

What you get for your money at an ARC event is pretty good.
1. opportunity for 4 days of non stop involvement
2. opportunity for heaps of experience
3. opportunity to make new friends and contacts and tell stories
4. opportunity to get access and chat to the best rally people in the land
5. opportunity to pace note
6. opportunity to make your sponsors happy
If you make the most of the opportunities that are made available then you come away with more than what you paid for.

Recce - Thursday
We take the Pajero knowing the extra ride height could compromise some of the small crest brows in our pacenotes but boy did this make a difference for which we were glad. Firstly, the capacity to write in a car with suspension means you don't end up with really crappy scrawl. Secondly you can compensate for the ride height. Thirdly because it had rained MTW in the area the 4WD was going to be handy. Everybody was shaking their heads at the state of the roads, some saying it was the worst conditions they had ever seen least of all had to drive a car through. Mud mud mud clay clay and crap. Many people ended up bogged needing help from others just to make it through. We even pulled a Landcruiser our of the bog! Our time management was OK getting two runs over the forest stuff during the day but opting to only do one pass of the famous Watagan Road, because the transport to it was way muddy and our notes felt pretty good having had all day to get our system pretty well honed.
One of the funniest stories of the whole weekend was from a nameless Nav telling a huge bullshit story to the Hire car company about his trip to a very muddy and boggy "winery" in the Hunter area !!! and that he could not really stay for long to process the car return paperwork, because his mate who worked for Beaurepaire's (standing next to rally vehicle trailer stacked with tyres and probably rally car) outside the hire shop was running late for work. Another funny sight was another nameless Nav pushing another hire car up a slight muddy grassy incline, while driver was keeping it on about 5000rpm, at the aborted recce of Eastern Creek gravel stage. To mention names here would be incriminating.

Eastern Creek - Friday night
Was bedlam - let's get to the forest ASAFP but yet it was nice to be on a track with a big reputation for speed. The witches hats and hay bale S's that were set up on the skid pan was a hoot.

Servicing
Henry Lemmon and Geoff Stewart - thanks heaps to the guys - Geoff's skills and experience meant a lot to us but the centralized Tuggerah service park meant a pretty boring itinerary for them but because there were heaps of services the gaps between visits were pretty short. Again the Corolla ran reliably as ever, a tribute to the Neal Bates Automotive preparation and the build of the car.

Officials
Many people just love being in the forest if it means you are near these cars. Being a long event with repeated stages you get to know these people along the way. Thanks to all of them.

Parties
Yes, there was heaps on Sunday post event. Starting at the pub next to Parc Ferme where the local bands were doing their Sunday arvo jam sessions, through to the Presentation Session grogery, blow the RSL club breathaliser machine comp, followed by a crazy double decker bus ride on which the crème de la crème let their hair down big time enroute to the Waterfront HQ boutique bar where it all started to get a bit blurry…..

Canberra people
We really reaped the benefit of heaps of support through the contacts made by being a part of a top rate club (BMSC) and the Canberra rally community. I won't name them here, but they know who they are. Thanks all, to helped us out, especially the guy who said to me "if you run now you should make it" to the control desk to enter Service A at Eastern Creek.

Organisation of the event
There were some big question marks over the organizers judgements in making some of the changes at Eastern Creek. Most of these were due to underestimating the effects of the space limitations and the flow and movement of spectators. Many changes were made to the roadbook and schedule which again made it more difficult for the younger players, namely us to get our heads around. Luckily for us some of the older heads were having the same problems. After Eastern Creek things could only get better…and with the beautiful sunshine on Sat and Sun the Recce nightmare did not continue.

Pacenotes
Writing these from scratch and then using them at competitive serious speed is just unbelievable !! Being able to tell the driver before they see the feature in time for them to prepare for it is very satisfying. It makes you much more a part of the speed and the drive. As Simon Evans has said being able to put a call in one ear get it out the other and focus on the notes rather than memory of the road is the way it should be. Greg and I got to this point for 4 out of 6 on Saturday and then 6 from 6 on Sunday. More opportunities to pacenote like Back in the Black must be made to promote this sort of this tool otherwise it is just ARC events where you get to have this amount of fun. We were skeptical about getting the so called "20% increased performance", but yep when they work you can really get on it with a high degree of safety and calmness!!

Dramas
Yes we had a couple, for a change.
Firstly, getting berthed on top of a culvert after a slippery steep left hander descent into a paddock after the 2nd forest stage caused a bit of stress. Both RHS wheels were about 1.5m in clear air, in danger of rolling onto its lid if it moved any further forward. Anyways with a bit of determination and thinking "what would Russel Winks do here ?" we (I) went to work on building a rock wall to drive the Rear right over, if we were to have any chance of getting the car to move forward, it was going to need to stay upright. There were not too many rocks around but the ones we found we made fit the best way possible. All was then sweet with a bit of forward movement. Amazingly we booked in 12 minutes late to the next control copping a 1 minute (5secs x 12) penalty on the ARC rules. We knew we could not exceed 30mins between the two controls. There were probably three other occasions where we booked in on the minute - not much time was left available by the course checkers to stuff around !
Secondly, while were in refuel area 2nd service Saturday, one of the marshals (Michael Walsh) pointed out that our left Front was rapidly deflating. Refuels were after the service area and forms part of the transport. We changed the flat, out of the control area and decided to leave the dud out of the car, no use having it in the car, (calling Henry to go an pick it up in the long grass outside the service area), hoping with fingers crossed that we would make it through the next 3 stages without a flat - phew… we did !
Thirdly, the OK board dilemma. We stopped on Stage 9 to assist an EvoIII which was bank slapped off the road. We could not see the OK board so we stopped. Having stopped, the crew which by now turned out to be 3 people (that's another story), showed their OK board which now in vision. We believe that they obscured it by the position of where they were standing. Anyways, if having stopped was not bad enough we got bogged in the soft stuff just off the crown as we tried to leave the scene. We lost 1min20 to 1min30 thereabouts. Our incident report with the Stop Control Post Chief apparently did not warrant any compassionate time consideration which Greg and I were fuming about, given the very very very extremely heavy emphasis at the crew briefing that "if you don't see the OK stop" !!! So we do the right thing and get pinged for it. Moral of the story is do not let the Post Chief write your incident report in their words take the time to do your own.

Crunching the numbers - results
We put in some respectable times, but the main thing that really counts here is that Greg and I reckon this was our best performance to date. Running on pacenotes was awesome and is definitely heaps faster than the normal road book. In both heats we placed around the 27th to 30th mark being 1st in N3 class, 2nd front wheel drive out of 4 if you discount penalties, and 6th two wheel drive. The other satisfaction was that on the repeated stages we improved our times quite dramatically, especially on the last drive of the event where we took off 13 sec out of an 8min stage - almost going sub 8's which is what the 4WD's were doing. Of the competitors around our road position we took time off more powerful P1 and P3 cars not to mention a couple of Rexy's which we were pretty chuffed about.

This event was about grasping and making the most of the opportunity which we put ourselves into - which we did - in the process we have improved our skills and are looking for the next opportunity.
.
John Paul

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