Blog

The morning was bright as we woke up to find out that we ended yesterday in 2nd place and 1st for the day. A proud result, but lots of pressure early on in the rally! Our friends in the Merc 280S also climbed a few spots and all was looking right for the 3rd day.

Our first regularity this morning, just over the Czech border, was a slippery affair and included gorgeous winding mountain roads. Soft snow cover on most sections, but unfortunately we found our team mates in the Porsche 924 just shy of the finish by the side of the road. They had been hit by a local forrest guard coming up the hill, cheating a bit of left hand side road. The impact was mild, but both cars had quite a bit of damage. The 924 burst its wiper fluid container, so it looked as though the radiator had been hit, but it appears now that all the boys need to continue is a new head lamp. We expect them to rejoin the field tomorrow morning.

Silverado continues to perform well but is about 100 kilo’s heavier with all the snow clinging to the chassis. The fresh snow on the road gets hovered up by the chassis and inside the wheel wells, creating an interesting sculpture around our early 911. At the lunch break I took some photo’s of the car where you can see our new flare extensions.

As I got more and more used to the quality of the snow, it has become easier to use the rear weight bias of the car to our advantage on tight corner. I can now enter them with more confidence, relying on the soft snow to resist the tires sufficiently to slide through in a controlled manner. This has made a lot of difference in keeping the correct pace in the regularities.

We had a solid day once more, but missed a section this morning which will cost us dearly in the standings. There’s a lot of apt crews placed below us and we can only hope that all of them made some kind of error today, so we can preserve our position. This event is usually decided on the last day, so all we can do is our best in the next few days.

Tomorrow we continue on here in the Czech Republic and look forward to more of the wonderful little roads we explored today!