In the third of an exclusive series of columns for Crash.net, former British Rally champion David Higgins talks about taking FX Motor Sports to the top of the BRC championship points table, his quick trip from Scotland to China, as well as paying his respect to his grandfather, Ken Leece, who recently passed away.
I am writing this column from China as we prepare for the Shanghai Rally this weekend.
It’s been a busy few weeks as we prepared for the
Jim Clark International Rally, and went pretty much straight from there to China. It’s not been a bad thing though, as the Shanghai is an asphalt event, so it will be good doing two asphalt events so close together.
And the Jim Clark went well. Okay, so we had a few problems and we lost out on second place to Stuart Jones in the final stage, but the important thing is third place was enough to mean we left Scotland leading the championship points.
I’m pleased that we’ve proved what FX Motor Sports is capable of, taking the new N14 to two podium positions in the first two events and leaving the second event leading the championship.
As I say, the Jim Clark wasn’t problem-free. Perhaps the strangest moment was when I started chewing a piece of wood to use it to plug a hole in the radiator, which we got on the second run through Langton. We managed to get to the start of the next stage, then the wood, some gloves and cable ties, did the trick and fixed the hole until we got to service. Then we replaced the radiator.
We lay second behind my brother Mark for most of the event, so it was annoying when we suffered gearbox problems in the final stage. We’d had a good battle with Stuart, who is one of the younger drivers I rate highly. In the final stage, he got past to leave us third. We had lost drive and had to limp round, losing over a minute in the process.
But now we’ve done our first gravel and asphalt events in the Subaru Impreza N14, it is great as the information we’ve gained during the rallies will set us up well for our next time out on each surface as we continue to develop the new cars.
