Day 4: A Slippery Affair…
- January 23, 2013
- TwinSpark Porsche Parts
- Posted by Rick Bruins
- Comments Off on Day 4: A Slippery Affair…
Our little error on the Regularity yesterday morning cost us 3 places and we dropped to 6th in the intermediate standings. There was a silver ligning though in that the organizers have introduced a deduction of the worst regularity option. So corrected for that we are still third. Presuming we do not mess up another section we are still in podium contention!
Today we explored the Czech hill country and boy were the roads for the Regularities slippery. We could match the required pace exactly and could barely correct for lost time without risking a big off into a lake or down a hillside… In spite of the challenging tracks we managed to complete all the regularities close to the ideal time. We may have lost a 2 minute penalty when we headed in the wrong direction at a time check and missed our self start time by as much. No big deal though.
On a down hill section after the penultimate Regularity we experience a straight line drift even with no throttle at all. The road was covered in polished ice underneath a slither of snow. Fortunately the space was ample to correct this but there were quite a few nervous giggles as the car straightened itself!
The program today included a hill climb on the famous Ecce Homo track, near Sternberk and it was a hoot. Lots of ice there as well but I believe we should have put in a decent time. The video we shot has some static sound which I can't explain, but the images will be sufficiently inspiring we hope.
The other team members enjoyed their day once more, with the Merc 280 S of Fer d'Arnaud attemting a few rescues of competitiors who had managed to beach themselves on the icy roads. This time there was so little traction that they had to abandon their attempt to save a few British competitors in a Jaguar MkII. The car had wiped out into a ditch on a wide, but very icy strectch and the 4×4 needed to be called in to complete the operation.
Our friends in the 924 had repaired the headlight which they found at a German salvage yard and they are back into the game.