In Nick Rowland's latest exclusive column for Crash.net, the youngster looks back on the Jim Clark International Rally, his first event in the Chinese Rally Championship and the Rally Show at Chatsworth.
After a great second place on the Pirelli International Rally, I arrived at the Jim Clark Rally excited to tackle my first proper tarmac rally and hopefully collect another healthy haul of points in the Suzuki Swift Sport Cup.
I shared a test with David [Higgins] and his Subaru before the event and I enjoyed driving on slicks for the first time, despite having two fairly big moments on a couple of runs.
It was also my first event running on totally my own pace notes so I was very eager to see how I was going to get on. Thankfully the recce was smooth sailing and, overall, I was pleased with my first set of real notes and, Tim [Sturla] and I have a good idea of what areas need work for the Manx.
However, a good result was not to be as during the first stage my Suzuki ‘swift-ly’ developed gearbox problems through the opening stage and, despite making it to stage 2, the car soon came to a halt.
We were forced to retire from the rest of the day and re-start on day two, with over an hours worth of penalties and no chance of a result. Tim and I were really gutted as you can imagine and above all, I was upset that I was going to miss out on vital time gaining tarmac experience, which I desperately needed.
As usual as soon as the car came into the service area the FX Motor Sports crew jumped into action and changed the gearbox in fantastic time ready for day two. It turned out that two other Suzukis had gearbox problems too, it was just a shame my problems came at a bad time. I spent the rest of the day all dressed up with nowhere to go.
