Guys… and girls thanks a lot for the kind words.
We had a blast and the most important was that no stages were cancelled. Well, and the stages were amazing!
Here’s what happened: on the second run through the Peanut, after hitting one of the rocks in the middle of the road, the steering got kinda jammed – almost locked. We kept in it (Martin yelling: “no heroics now!!!”), eventually I realized that the steering was ‘consistently’ broken, hence quite predictable… I was sure that we broke the steering rack. I’ve never broken the rack before, so I didn’t know how it should feel and there was no way to contact the team. So we decided to do a “fast recce” on the last stage.
Just before pulling into the time control, I pressed the button… and the Beast wouldn’t start! And the starter didn’t make proper sounds… We didn’t have much time to think: bump started the car in reverse (we were on the uphill), checked in and started the stage. The handling was consistent and I was trying to test how fast is too fast for Martin to make changes in the notes -
I think we were about 2 seconds per km slower than our pace on those roads before the problem. And I was impressed to see that all the changes I wanted were put in the notes.
Now, when pulling into service, I stalled the car for real and we had to push the last 30 meters… but it was nice to finish after that little drama!
We have later found out that it wasn’t the steering rack… the impact with the rock broke starter’s mounts, the started fell down and got jammed between the gear box and the steering column… that’s why, on the jumps, the steering was working great!
I was surprised how warm a lot of people took our penalty decision (thanks!), but I have to say, that we function only as a team, and that was a team decision. I will never get tired of repeating, that without my racing family, Can-Jam Motorsports, I definitely wouldn’t have been racing and having all this fun!
Warm regards,
Leo