Carey Motorsport: July 2011

Sunday, 31 July 2011

Lurgan Park Rally 2011

Rachel and I went along to the Lurgan Park Rally yesterday, it's only 2 miles up the road so it would have been rude not to really. I've been going to the rally since I was a child, my Dad would take us every year so it's almost a family tradition. As you would imagine the weather makes or breaks the event so we were lucky this year with some lovely sunshine, it's not often we got two sunny Saturdays in a row to enjoy some motorsport.

We got there on time to see the first stage which was just as well as I wanted to see Clive Latimer and Davy McElroy in action and they broke down in their Mini Clubman on the second stage. At least we got to see their only run of the day.

The highlight of the rally as far as I was concerned were the retro machines that Slowly Sideways Ireland had brought along. Beautiful looking and sounding cars, and the drivers were really going for it. I love how they all sound different, from the V6 of the 6R4, to the in-line 5 of the Audi, to the flat 6's in the Porsche's and the V8's in the TR7 and Jimmy McRae's 5.0 Firenza Can-Am, brilliant.

This Avenger rally car even had an Avenger service car to complete the period look:

Nicely turned out Nova engine bay:

Results:
http://www.anicc.org.uk/Resources/Documents/20110730_NAMC_LurganPark_Results.pdf

Slowly Sideways Ireland:
http://www.slowlysidewaysireland.com/

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

QUBMC Summer Lanes 2011

Saturday at the Summer Lanes was great fun. I haven't done a flat out bit of driving for ages and it was brilliant to be back in the Nova again and even better the sun was shining. The Summer Lanes is open to all cars so there was quite a mix of cars among the 40 crews that started. My Nova, MX-5's, 1980's Starlets, a BMW CSL, Minis, Midgets, a Manta and the ever present RWD Fords. We completed 16 tests and everyone seemed to be having a great day out.

Rachel and I had a good run but made a mistake on the first run through the long Evervale test and incurred a test maximum which meant we posted a 5:31 rather than our 2:19. Losing over 3 minutes put us well out of the running but we kept our heads and didn't make anymore mistakes for the rest of the day, ending up 18th overall at the finish. Without our penalty we would have been 9th which I would have been happy with. Some of the lower cars had problems with the rougher sections of the route but as the Nova sits quite high my main worry was punctures. I didn't hear of anyone getting a puncture so maybe I was worrying about nothing.

I have a few things to look at before the next event. The engine felt a bit down on power, I'm not sure what was wrong but if felt a bit "flat". We turned down the fueling to pass the MOT emissions so maybe we went a bit too far. The handbreak wasn't as tight as I've been used to so I had to reverse a couple of times, not very tidy, or quick. Traction was also a minor problem, some new tyres might help or it might just have been that the lanes were greasy from lack of use.

I filmed the rally on my in-car camera so if I ever work out how to edit the footage I'll put up a link to it.