Carey Motorsport: QUB Summer Lanes Rally 2012

Saturday the 21st July was the Queens University of Belfast Motor Clubs Summer Lanes Rally. QUBMC is our club so we were involved with the organisation in the build up to the event, so by the day of the rally it's a big relief that it's the end of the stress and the work. This year we had 3 student members (Conor Auld, James Scott and Philip Campbell) in charge and as none of them have competed on any motorsport event they had a bit of a mountain to climb. Luckily Conors father Clifford Auld was able to step in and be an experienced voice to guide them through. Together they managed to secure some new lanes for this years and they did a great job. The event ran great and everyone seemed to really enjoy the rally. It's probably the best that the rally has ever run. The same team have more ideas they want to try out and are keen to take on the organising of the event again next year which is brilliant news.

As I compete in the event my involvement in the organisation has to be limited to non-test stuff and so this year I made up some new code boards. We have used the same code boards every year, they are simply car number plates with a 3 letters followed by 3 numbers format. I felt that they are too short and didn't slow the cars down enough so the new code boards are 4 letters and 4 numbers. To allow the boards to be use for many years to come I build them with 96 individual, quick change code plates with 2 digits on each. This will allow us a huge number of code combinations and it will make it easy to change the code between cars if we want to.

We had a good clean run through all the tests with only a single penalty (for grazing a pylon) so we were really happy. I think the few autotests I have done in the car have produced a great improved in my speed on the technical sections. I am much more confident maneuvering the car on the handbrake than I was before and I can place the car much better. My new ecowing Kumho tyres proved to be dead on too, I didn't notice any reduction in grip over the quatrac's that I had on before. We finished up 17th overall which I am happy with. I know there are a few things that I could change on the car to gain a few seconds and I still haven't got much confidence on the loose. On the whole everyone ahead of us is much more experienced than we are and they have cars build for this kind of event, but hopefully we will be able to catch up with them someday.