PEDLEY RALLYING

Having been quite inactive on the competing front this year, we were looking forward to The Tunnocks Tour of Mull with great anticipation. The improvements to the gearbox gave us the extra performance we had been looking for and we felt that we could convert that into good stages times on our favourite event. In the weeks leading up to the event we had been seeded at number 139 which was an improvement on last year's 157 and the Vauxhall Astra of Phil Merrills and William Kelly was seeded at 96. As last year, we had a great team to back us up with John and Chris manning the service van and the management car would be crewed by Dave and first time visitor to the island Christine, who had resisted the temptation to go with the rest of the girls on their trip to Disneyland Paris in favour of the lure of the Best Rally in the World. 

The advance party of myself, Chris junior and Matthew left Manchester on the Tuesday evening prior to the event and drove through the night to catch the early morning ferry, arriving at our hosts Lachie and Betty at around eight'o'clock. After a welcome cup of tea, we were out on the island doing the first of our pre-event recce. With car ready for the rally, the next two days was spent on fine tuning the pace notes with extra attention being given to the Loch Scridain and Gribun stages which we had not done well on in the past. Thursday saw the arrival of Dave and Christine and also Nick and Heather Stamper, experiencing the island for the first time. The remainder of the team, John, Chris and Craig arrived on Friday morning. 

Scrutineering was held as usual at the Tobermory Distillery and after a minor hiccup with the extinguisher cable we passed and after the driver's briefing, we headed off back home for a hearty meal and forty winks before the long night ahead. As we approached our start time, we had already decided in our minds that our main objective was to improve our times from last year's event.

Scrutineering completed - Ready for the off!

Stage one was the usual run out from Tobermory over Mishnish Lochs and the hairpins into the village of Dervaig. Chris was sure he had the pace to take time off last year's 9.03 and set off in determined mood and was very quickly in the groove. The first piece bad news was received as we approached the top of the hairpins section when we passed Phil's stricken Astra, later finding out that they had been off and ripped the front pulley off the engine.  We continued at a good pace to the end of the stage and were amazed at the stage finish when we checked the time - 8.03, exactly one minute quicker over just six miles. Meeting up with our emergency service crew of Dave and Christine, we excitedly relayed the time to them and headed off to stage two without any work needed on the car. Stage two was the 14 miles of the Hill Road and Loch Tuath and the first of our problems, having made a good positive start and passed car 138, stopped with a puncture and then caught and passed Nicola Harper in car 136, the engine temperature started to rise, until we started to lose power towards the end of the stage. As we got to the finish the car was boiling up and had lost all the water, Luckily for us we stopped  right opposite a water trough in a field and a couple very helpful spectators who ran a shuttle service to keep refilling our drinks bottles, as we attempted to quench the thirsty engine. Despite the problems, our time of 16.14 was a minute and half up on our '05 time. Luckily we were heading off into service and had the opportunity to fix the overheating problem. With the lads waiting for us at the Craignure service halt, John went to work, quickly discovering that the problem was a split heater hose. Using a new piece of pipe we isolated the heater and effected a temporary repair in time for us to head off on the twenty eight mile road section to the two Ardtun stages.

The Ardtun stage gave us one of our biggest moments on last years event when we went over a jump and landed with four wheels on the grass verge and just managed to get away with it. So the message from the co-drivers seat was to approach the stage with caution. Maybe the intercom wasn't working at this point because Chris pushed from the start and yet again hit the grass on the same jump, although the balance of the car was much better than last year and didn't slow us down at all. As we approached the finish we saw the lights of Ric Wood in his MGZR, meaning that we had taken nearly thirty seconds off him in just over two miles. Our time of 3.24 was huge improvement on last year and as we later found out was the quickest time for a class A car on Stage 3. The next stage was re-run of stage 3 and the confidence gained on the previous stage meant Chris was really on a charge with the result he approached a tight right hander a bit too quick and ended up spinning and nudging a bank. With no damage done we continued to the end of the stage, recording 3.30, even with the spin it was still 15 seconds quicker than last years effort.

To be continued..............................................

Pics from the event