Back on Form!

Hi All,
Firstly, I've been told that my new site will be online early next week, so this will allow things to be updated a lot quicker and more efficiently.
We have been out quite a bit since the last update, with the next round of the Kick Energy Fiesta Sport Trophy UK being the first, at the Isle of Man International Rally. It was an extremely tough event, with one day recce for 11 different stages, which was nearly as hard as the rally! With that out of the way and a good shakedown, we started the rally on Friday morning. The first stage was very tricky, and it saw the demise of my main fiesta rival, Kris Hall, and another possible threat Mark Donnelly, both with accidents. This put me in a great position for the championship, and I was leading comfertably after the first few stages. We put in a very conservative drive for the remaing few stages of the Fiesta rally, and at the end of the day, we won by over two minutes! Kris got back to fourth in the end, so it still keeps the championship quite tight. With the Fiesta rally over, we pushed on for overall results. We had a very good run over the last few stages of leg 1 to finish the day 10th overall and looking good for class R3 honours. Day 2 started well, with a few fastest times in our class, but unfortunatly on SS16, we got caught out on a tricky section of the Curragh stage, and rolled into retirement. It was an unfortunate end to a great drive, but at least we still had our Fiesta points from the previous day.
From there, we wen't to the next round of the Irish Junior Rally championship, the ALMC Junior Rally, this time, in M-Sport's new Fiesta R2 car. It was an exciting prospect giving the car it's Irish rally debut, and we created a lot of intrest in the car. It was a good day for me and Gareth, finishing second to Marty McCormack in his Citroen C2R2 Max. We had some electrical trouble to start with, but towards the end of the event, we were well able for the C2, which we were very pleased with. Overall the Fiesta R2 has a lot of potential in the right hands, and things are looking good for the future.
We wen't from there to take on our greatest task so far, Rally Finland. Again like Portugal, this was a round of the FSTi, and after missing the last two rounds, we needed to get back on top again. It was a tough recce, and we concentrated on getting as much detail as possible into our notes, and this definatly paid off when we did the rally. We had a superspecial stage on Thursday evening, and we got off to a steady start with 4th fastest time. The real stages started on Friday morning, and we immediatly set the pace. We moved into the lead and pulled out a lead of 40 seconds by the end of the day. Saturday started well with more fastest times, and we increased the lead to 50 seconds over Finnish driver Jussi Kumpamaki. However, mid way through Saturday, Kumpamaki started to charge and take time back from us. We had a 30km tes at the end of the day and we knew that we needed to push as hard as we could over this, and we did, pulling 3 seconds from Jussi, and I feel this was crucial for us. We started the final day with a 30 second lead. We chose to drive conservativly, only pushing if we had to. Jussi took 3 off us on the first stage, 3 off us on the second one, and with the second run over the famous Myhinpaa stage being cancelled, it left the short 6km Ruuhimaki to run, and with over 20 seconds in hand, we knew we could relax. We cleared the stage losing only 2 seconds, which gave us our second FSTi win by just 20 seconds after 3 days of driving, a great end to a tough week! We were also 26th overall, a great achievment for a rally as tough as Rally Finland. It was a great effort by all the team, and everyone really pulled there weight and the result was there in the end, thanks guys!
I was brought down to earth soon after the rally however, when I was admitted to hospital with appendicitus. It was removed on Friday last, and I was released on Tuesday 11th August. However I was still feeling well enough to resume National Junior Rally championship duties this weekend at the Cork Forestry, back out in M-Sports R2 car once again.
It was a great day, we finished 7th overall, and won the junior catogory, so it was nice to get the first win for the fiesta.
Looking ahead, next weekend is the Ulster Rally, which is probably going to be one of the most important events so far. With the possibility of winning both the Irish and British FST championships on the same day, it's an exctiting prospect to say the least. I'm trying not to think of the championships and drive how I usually do, which seems to work a lot of the time. And hopefully we will leave Antrim as champions all going well.
As I said the site should be online soon so keep an eye out for that
Thanks for your time,
Craig