Tom Cave endured a frustrating event on the Talsi Rally last weekend, the second round of the 2008 Latvian Rally Championship.
Cave and co-driver Gemma Price were settling well into what the locals regard as the toughest event in the calendar when they slid wide on one corner and tipped their car into a slow roll. When the engine failed to restart and with broken front and rear windscreens, they were forced to retire from the event.
Cave's first rally in 2008 in the National Championship started well. The event saw a pair of gravel stages on Saturday afternoon, followed by two back-to-back runs through the centre of Talsi town. By the end of the first leg on Saturday evening, Cave and Price were 7th in class, less than 10 seconds behind their closest competitor in a Honda Civic Type R.
However, rain during Saturday night changed the nature of the event significantly and the stages on Sunday morning became extremely slippery and rutted, with rocks being dragged out of the surface into the road.
It was on the day's sixth stage that the problem began. Cave slid wide on a medium speed corner 4Km from the start of the stage and into soft mud at the edge of the road. The day before, this would have been dry gravel and the chances are the car would simply have carried on. However, the overnight rain had turned this to mud and it dragged the car further off the road and into a small ditch by the side of the road.
This caused the car to pitch up into a slow roll and come to rest on its roof. Both Cave and Price were unhurt in the incident and the passionate Latvian rally fans soon had the Fiesta ST back on its wheels, with Tom quickly trying to re-start the engine so they could continue.
However, because the car had been inverted, the engine oil had run into the top of the engine and fouled the spark plugs and it refused to restart. Despite their attempts, Cave and Price were forced to retire on the spot, a frustrating end to the first event of their 2008 campaign proper.
![Tom Cave in action on the 2008 Rally Kekava. [Pic credit: Arturs Tinte, www.lifemirror.lv]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/436708.jpg)
