Well we finished what proved to be a very challenging North Humberside rally. Having been delayed during the day left Lincoln a little late, but werem't too concerned. However on route our service van (the family MPV) deicided to start running in safe mode! This delayed us somewhat, however we got to Whitby and just scraped through noise test, scrutineering and signing-on. Then we could relax....

Saturday was a glorious day to start with, and with the car having been checked over we headed for the start in a boyent mood. Stage 1 started well, Ned driving smoothly and speeding up nicely as the stage progressed. Things were going well. However about 6 miles from the end of the stage Ned noticed the brakes were going soft. We were still pushing and soft brake pedal caught us out on a 90 left, the nose of the car dropped into a ditch and we ended up on our roof!

The many spectators were soon desending on the car, I had to get out and which is interesting when your strapped in up side down. The car was put on it's wheels, and pulled out of the ditch. The whole incident lost us close to 3 minutes. This put paid to a result, for the day, but the car was still going.

Before SS2 we had a check round and the damage was quite light considering the roll, so SS2 being quite short a steady approach was taken and this paid off. We met Dave & Paul at auxilary service. They checked the car over added some masking tape and off we went.

SS3 this was our clear stage. A fast but sensible approach was taken, no risks needed and it paid off, a smooth run gave us quite a good time, so we headed off to service hoping for a clear afternoon, which was a repeat of the 1st 3 stages. Service past off well with Dave & Paul giving the car a good check over.

SS4 was a repeat of SS1, with the weather now closing in and rain coming down the stage seemed to be going very well, again we were feeling comfortable. At about the 4 mile mark Ned complained the steering was going heavy, and a big plume of smoke indicated that the power steering had failed, not only was the steering heavy but lost a lot of feeling. This cost us some 30 seconds as we backed off for the rest of the stage.

SS5 followed straight away, by now we had settled to get to the finish! As we pulled away from the start the turbo had very little boost and the car was under powered, this meant with steering problems a very slow time was in the offing. We then decided to go for the finish and limp through stage 6.

With our hazards on this is what we did, the turbo started to behave by the middle of the stage, however we weren't running the Anti-Lag System (ALS) buy now. Once we cleared the stage it was a nervous run back to Whitby, but we made the finish. Feeling very happy a plan of sorting the car now needs to be drawn up.

Welcome to our new blog. We'll use this to keep you up to date with how things are going and how we are feeling as the season progresses, a little more personal than the news section.

The season started successfully with our finish on Wyedean. Overall the rally went really well. The main frustration was such a low seeding, as this did impact the day with us catching cars on 4 of the 7 stages. Was to be expected as we haddened rallied for a while. The last stage felt especially good even though we weren't very quick through it we made sure of a fininsh by working really well together really getting the stage flowing well.

The car has now had the front end damage sorted out, we have also got a new intercooler, and put an aluminium bonnet on the car now. Their only small things but with all the work done on the car so far they should hopefully add a small competitive edge.

We have some small jobs to get the car sorted for Humberside on the 29th, but we're almost sorted. The car is off to Langworth Motorsport on Tuesday to double check the new turbo and also finally to get the trip computer working.