In between the excesses of food and drink of christmas and new year a small stage rally at Longmoor camp is run, and provides a great day out to a) have a play and b) get away from all the festivities.
We (Suze driving the Micra) were entered and drove down early that morning, making good time to get there for 7.30am. Scrutineering was easy and at noise they wanted us to be louder (we only made 81dB !). Longmoor only gets used once a year, as it is an active MoD base so photo's are hard to come by. But this also means the roads are very slippery, the first two stages were just that very slippery. Suze did well to hold on to many slides and as the stages progressed we were improving in speed. By the 4th stage of the day the course was drying out and Suze was finding her feet with more speed and aggression behind the wheel.
However during lunch the rain came back, and so did the lack of grip. This lead to a moment on the last corner of stage 5 where we ran wide and hit a curb. It pushed the OSF wheel back into wheel arch. We limped across the finish line, but the damage was done.
Luckily we managed to bend the OSF wishbone back to almost where Nissan intended it to be, due to hard work of many people who helped out from the service park. This was helpful as we had driven the car to the event and needed to drive it back..... So a DNF to finish the year, which was annoying as Suze was really beginning to find her speed. Lets hope 2012 fairs better :)
Thanks to RallyOnline for the picture - see here for more http://www.rallygallery.com/2011_LOCO.aspx?Page=51
We (Suze driving the Micra) were entered and drove down early that morning, making good time to get there for 7.30am. Scrutineering was easy and at noise they wanted us to be louder (we only made 81dB !). Longmoor only gets used once a year, as it is an active MoD base so photo's are hard to come by. But this also means the roads are very slippery, the first two stages were just that very slippery. Suze did well to hold on to many slides and as the stages progressed we were improving in speed. By the 4th stage of the day the course was drying out and Suze was finding her feet with more speed and aggression behind the wheel.
However during lunch the rain came back, and so did the lack of grip. This lead to a moment on the last corner of stage 5 where we ran wide and hit a curb. It pushed the OSF wheel back into wheel arch. We limped across the finish line, but the damage was done.
Luckily we managed to bend the OSF wishbone back to almost where Nissan intended it to be, due to hard work of many people who helped out from the service park. This was helpful as we had driven the car to the event and needed to drive it back..... So a DNF to finish the year, which was annoying as Suze was really beginning to find her speed. Lets hope 2012 fairs better :)
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