In Nick Rowland's second exclusive column for Crash.net, the youngster looks back on his first outing in the inaugural Suzuki Swift Sport Cup and lots, lots more...
Now that the first round of the Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship is over, the Pirelli International, there is one lesson I have learned looking back over the last couple of months. That lesson is to never give up and persevere.
Directly after my last blog a few things did not totally go to plan. To start with, the first round of the Chinese Rally Championship was cancelled due to damaged roads and, with the next round not until the end of May, it has left us with another long wait to finally get out there, which was a shame.
Next up was a test event in a hired Evo 8 rally car. Unfortunately it was a terrible event for me, it was my first ever drive in a Group N 4WD car and it was a massive learning curve. Having only ever driven the car up and down the road by our hotel before the event it was all a bit new. We only managed to complete a few stages before the diff locked solid, ending the rally after a few miles.
However after the event I was able to take away a few positives and also identify some things that I was doing that needed changing, which in the long run will only be a good thing.
The next setback came along when my co-driver was no longer able to go to China with me for the season, which was a real shame. It had been quite a tough month.
David [Higgins - TQ/FX Motor Sports team boss] was really good at this point and we quickly came up with an action plan to get things on track again, with the Pirelli International Rally only weeks away.
David decided that I needed to get into the forest and drive a rally car totally on the limit without the worry of damaging it. Within a flash my trusty old Micra F1000 rally car came up to FX and we spent a couple of days thrashing it to bits, if anything just having a good time!
