The 1998 Jaycee Rally Part 2

The first tests were set on gravel roads in private forest land, each a few hundred yards long. At the start of each test we were handed a diagram showing the layout of the course, and special instructions such as stopping astride a line denoted by a pair of cones .

All too soon we were back out on regularity again. Just before lunch, at the BRS depot where we had been scrutinised the night before, we were racing around between the buildings on tarmac and dirt. We shot off from the start line, raced up to a pair of cones where we stopped astride, shot off again through a tight gap between two buildings, came on a solitary cone which we had to circle completely in a clockwise direction, then veered away through another narrow gap and round the back of a large warehouse to another pair of cones close to the finish, a quick stop astride and blast away before sliding to a halt astride the finish line

Interim results showed us ninth overall. Three good test times and two excellent regularity runs had put us in the top quarter of the rally. Would this be a fairy-tale start with an award on our first time out? No, it wouldn't! The combination of a good lunch and no sleep over the previous nights caught up with us very quickly that afternoon; a wrong turning around the islands in a car-park test followed by getting lost in the countryside saw us dumped unceremoniously back into the rump end of the field. We struggled for twenty minutes to find out both where we were and where we should be going before finally sorting ourselves out and reaching the control about as late as we were allowed to be. We had a gentle run through the centre of Merthyr Tydfil to the last set of tests in another large car-park and a tea break before one last regularity section, but the damage had been done, we were 36th.

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