It obviously was a really big disappointment; it was my first-ever engine failure, and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. We were leading the event by over two minutes in class, but unfortunately that’s the way it goes sometimes. That’s rallying – the sport we all love – and it’s never over until it’s over. Anything can happen. It’s just down to the rub of the green, and unfortunately again Lady Luck wasn’t with us in Ulster. That’s two-out-of-two now where I’ve retired there, so we’ll have to go back next year and make it third time lucky!
Following that we managed to fit in a little test down in Wales. It was cut short by some mechanical issues with the car, but it got my mind back into driving on gravel after three tarmac events, and I soon settled back into it. We consequently went up to the Trackrod Rally in Yorkshire with a lot of confidence of getting a good result, especially as I’ve done well there in the past too, but fate had other ideas once again...
This time it was due to an innocuous-looking rock in the middle of the road. It wasn’t a very big one, and I saw it and consciously thought ‘I can drive over that and it should be fine’, but as I went over it there was a bang underneath and unfortunately it cracked the gearbox casing. After about two miles we had lost all the gearbox oil, and when we came out of a tight right-hand corner the differential blew up because there was no oil left in there and that was it. We were just stuck where we were.
