Reigning British Rally Championship Class R3 Champion and Crash.net columnist Matt Beebe is looking to make it three titles out of three on December’s Wales Rally GB, the final round on the 2007 BRC calendar. He could, however, have done without a brace of expensive problems on the last two rallies that have slashed his Class R2 points lead ahead of the all-important decider, as he explains…
We went to Ulster back at the end of August with a real point to prove, because I had only managed to do six miles there last year before crashing – we didn’t even get to set one stage time! We returned there this time with a definite score to settle, and determined to beat Ulster after it had beaten us last year.
It was an extremely tricky event. The first four stages comprised a loop of two in the daylight before we went back and did them both again in the dark, and it was raining as well. The first run through during the day was already really slippery, but second time around it was even more so and you had the added difficulty that you couldn’t really see where you were going! It was an extremely tough challenge to start with, but we got through the first evening really well and comfortably in the lead. On the Saturday too the conditions were changeable all day – you couldn’t be on the right tyres for all the stages.
We were absolutely flying though – I was really pleased with how my co-driver Gareth Roberts and I were working together. The car was going very well and we were setting some really good times in the difficult conditions, but then with nine miles to go on the penultimate stage, and without any warning whatsoever, the engine just let go. We had a good lead at the time and had backed off – we weren’t stressing the engine especially hard or taking any risks. We then used SupeRally to get to the end of the event. Every point we can get is important, so although SupeRally is not my favourite rule within the sport we were more than happy to take advantage of it to keep us in with a shout of the championship.
