In Matt Beebe's first exclusive column of the year for Crash.net, the 2007 BRC R2 title winner gives us his take on round one...
The Pirelli International Rally came to Carlisle again last weekend, the opening round of the 2008 Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship, and even by Thursday evening the place was buzzing. Everywhere you went there were rally cars, service vehicles and rally personnel.
My only disappointment was going to be that I would only be participating in the recce and not the rally itself. Financial constraints, not selling the good old faithful MG-ZR over the winter, had put paid to that - but we were not going to miss out completely.
Participating in the recce meant that I could still keep up and improve my pace-note making, an essential part of International rallying. I did not want to get rusty.
Without my Rally Academy co-driver Gareth Roberts, who helped me to the 2007 R2 BRC title and who was competing in the Pirelli National Rally with Elfyn Evans, I had to rely on my team manager to sit with me for the recce, a bit different to the local road rallies we had done in the past.
The first loop of the recce comprised two passes through stages 1-4 (repeated as SS8-11 in the rally) and I felt pleased with the notes I had made, although we would not get to test them out this year.
We had completed one pass into the second loop, stages 5-7 (SS12-14) and came across Stuart Jones and his co-driver Andy Bull, who had developed problems with their recce car. As they were doing the rally in their new MG Super 2000, my navigator and I moved into the back seats and let them take over the driving so they could continue making their pace-notes.
Once the loop had been completed we left them at their stricken recce car and chased after the recce train and marshals to let them know that they and their car needed a tow back to service - some 50 miles away.
From there it was time for us to go and get some food and drink before the start in Carlisle town centre.
We were soon back into the forests though, to watch the International rally boys in action and I was keen to see the stages at night.
