by Rob Wilkins
TO HEAR THE INTERVIEW IN FULL WITH GUY WILKS: CLICK HERE
Mitsubishi's Guy Wilks has had a mixed start to the defence of BRC crown and while he dominated the Pirelli - round one of 2008 Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship, he was forced out on the Jim Clark last month, when his car caught fire on SS4.
Crash.net Radio caught up with the Englishman recently to get his thoughts on his year to date and to chat about the next event on the Isle of Man in July...
Crash.net:
Guy, we are two events in and so far you have had quite contrasting results.
Guy Wilks:
We have gone from highs to lows. The first round was very good for us and obviously we had a resounding win - Phil [Pugh – my co-driver], Mitsubishi and I. We were hoping to follow on from that and win the
Jim Clark, especially after last year’s mishap. We were out to make amends. But unfortunately it was taken out of our hands.
Crash.net:
How disappointing was it to have that fire on SS4 of the Jim Clark?
GW:
I was gutted. Phil and I knew we had the pace to win it. We know we have the pace to win every event in the British championship this year and we were determined to try and make amends for the one mistake we made last year. We are very well motivated for this year and it was a big kick in the teeth when we had a problem at the start of stage four. We hadn’t spat the dummy out. We were just trying to carry the problem in the rear differential. It was making a noise and 3 or 4 miles later it momentarily seized. Then the prop-shaft snapped and when it was flailing, which was maybe only for five or six hundred metres before we stopped, it managed to rupture the fuel tank and with the hot exhaust, the fuel was spraying onto that. It was bad enough we had a problem. But ultimately it wasn’t as bad as the end result - the fire and the car being totally wreaked.
Crash.net:
I guess the main consolation was that you had good pace before and it wasn’t your fault…
GW:
Exactly. I was really, really frustrated though and Phil was trying to calm me down. Even before the fuel tank was ruptured I knew it wasn’t our fault. I knew we had done nothing wrong. We did have the pace and Abbey St Bathans is one of my favourite stages in the world - never mind the British championship. I think it is the best stage in the BRC. We knew it was important to have a good start there, although we hadn’t really pushed ourselves too hard. We had a good start and we took maybe 4 seconds out of Mark [Higgins] on the first stage. On the second stage we had a slight handling problem - a lot of understeer - and we just backed off to make sure we didn’t make any silly mistakes. It was hard for me to push the car because the understeer was quite heavy. Stage 3 we managed to get it sorted - or at least going in the right direction. We made another small change for stage 4, but obviously it didn’t make much difference after the problem we had.
Crash.net:
The next event now is the Rally Isle of Man. Have you got any testing before then?
