The dead zone between Christmas and New Year is a strange time of year so I was very pleased when my good friend Robert Erwin asked me to navigate for him on the Turkey Run stage rally, up at the old Shacklton army barracks at Ballykelly. I have only navigated on one rally before, and I wasn't very good at it, so I told him as long as he could memorise the stage and didn't actually need to rely on me calling him the correct notes then I was up for helping him out.
I was really looking forward to navigating for Robert as he and his father have recently finished the build of a very exciting wee rally car. They have installed a 2.0 Honda K20 engine and Quaife sequential gearbox into a Toyota MR2 Roadster. It's a great going rally car and when Robert gets more comfortable with the mid engine handling characteristics I have no doubt they will put in some great stage times. The car is right at the start of its development and I look forward to watching it get faster and faster out on the stage.
The Erwins were treating the Turkey Run as a test day so it took a lot of the pressure off me. The first 3 stages went well with use getting quicker on each run, but then we had an engine issue which gave us a couple of bad stage times. The problem was eventually traced to a broken spark plug. The rally was running late so the final stage took place in darkness. We didn't have a lamp pod so were driving almost blind, black round bale chicanes are almost impossible to see at rally speed, but we survived and had a good days rallying.
Video of us on stage 3:
And a crazy quick video of our friends Steve Smith and Ashley Boulton on stage 4:
Results:
http://www.rallyscore.net/408/Turkey-Run-2016
Thanks to Ian Geddes for the action photos:
https://www.facebook.com/IanGeddesPhotography/
