After a mild day yesterday Murphy struck with full force today on the winding mountain roads of Slovenia.
On a Benularity this morning our ignition cap rattled loose on stretch full of potholes. The rotor got damaged and the coil must have burnt through. After a quick diagnosis we were about to call in for help when Fer and Gerard passed by. I asked if they carried these spares and low and behold: they did! We carried the other components for the ignition and the coil, so together we could replace the required parts and we were proud of our friends and our getting the engine to fire up in one go once everything was in place.
We merrily continued our journey, drove our first test in Logatec and picked up the pace by skipping lunch.
The first benularity was a bit of a challenge and we lost some more time. On the second [...]
At 3 minutes flat we tackled this challenging and slippery road course. Little did we know that the organisors had sprayed water in some of the corners, which had obviously frozen and caught us unawares… Despite this error we put down a competitive time and had a blast. We were interviewed for television after the finish, so perhaps you’ll see some shots from outside the car on Dutch channels…
The connecting legs and regularities were challenging due to mixed surface conditions: asphalt, wet, ice, snow, all following in rapid succession, leading to many “human ABS” footwork.
Story of the day to me was the situation Ron and Birgit Lopez Cardoso went through today in their BMW 2002. Somewhere along the line the throttle bar played u an Ron had it clean in his hands, yet managed to finish! Here’s a shot of one of Holland’s leading historic Rally couples:
This morning we completed the first test of the Winter Trial on the ice and snow track at Altenmarkt in Austria. We completed the two laps with only one spin and were 1,5 minutes faster than last year. This was so much fun, it’s got be illegal…
