Reigning British Rally Championship Class R3 Champion and Crash.net columnist Matt Beebe is looking to make it three titles out of three on December's Wales Rally GB, the final round on the 2007 BRC calendar. He could, however, have done without a brace of expensive problems on the last two rallies that have slashed his Class R2 points lead ahead of the all-important decider, as he explains…
We went to Ulster back at the end of August with a real point to prove, because I had only managed to do six miles there last year before crashing – we didn't even get to set one stage time! We returned there this time with a definite score to settle, and determined to beat Ulster after it had beaten us last year.
It was an extremely tricky event. The first four stages comprised a loop of two in the daylight before we went back and did them both again in the dark, and it was raining as well. The first run through during the day was already really slippery, but second time around it was even more so and you had the added difficulty that you couldn't really see where you were going! It was an extremely tough challenge to start with, but we got through the first evening really well and comfortably in the lead. On the Saturday too the conditions were changeable all day – you couldn't be on the right tyres for all the stages.
We were absolutely flying though – I was really pleased with how my co-driver Gareth Roberts and I were working together. The car was going very well and we were setting some really good times in the difficult conditions, but then with nine miles to go on the penultimate stage, and without any warning whatsoever, the engine just let go. We had a good lead at the time and had backed off – we weren't stressing the engine especially hard or taking any risks. We then used SupeRally to get to the end of the event. Every point we can get is important, so although SupeRally is not my favourite rule within the sport we were more than happy to take advantage of it to keep us in with a shout of the championship.
It obviously was a really big disappointment; it was my first-ever engine failure, and it couldn't have happened at a worse time. We were leading the event by over two minutes in class, but unfortunately that's the way it goes sometimes. That's rallying – the sport we all love – and it's never over until it's over. Anything can happen. It's just down to the rub of the green, and unfortunately again Lady Luck wasn't with us in Ulster. That's two-out-of-two now where I've retired there, so we'll have to go back next year and make t third time lucky!
Following that we managed to fit in a little test down in Wales. It was cut short by some mechanical issues with the car, but it got my mind back into driving on gravel after three tarmac events, and I soon settled back into it. We consequently went up to the Trackrod Rally in Yorkshire with a lot of confidence of getting a good result, especially as I've done well there in the past too, but fate had other ideas once again...
This time it was due to an innocuous-looking rock in the middle of the road. It wasn't a very big one, and I saw it and consciously thought 'I can drive over that and it should be fine', but as I went over it there was a bang underneath and unfortunately it cracked the gearbox casing. After about two miles we had lost all the gearbox oil, and when we came out of a tight right-hand corner the differential blew up because there was no oil left in there and that was it. We were just stuck where we were.
Going into that stage, I hadn't actually seen the most up-to-date leaderboard, and I thought we were still behind Vesa Mikkola in the Honda and George Thomas in the Citroën. As it was George had already retired with mechanical failure and Vesa had put it off the road, so in reality we were leading. We weren't chasing the cars in front of us; we were happy in third and had gone into the stage aiming just to get through it, get to the end again and score some more good points, but as in Ulster the luck just wasn't with us. We must have gone over 10,000 rocks on that event which looked exactly the same as that one, but this time it stuck the car in the wrong place and put us out of the rally.
It was massively frustrating again when we had been heading for a good result; I was really happy with how I was driving and how Gareth was reading the notes. To have a mechanical failure when you're on course for a good result is always a big disappointment, but we could take some bonuses away from the times we had been setting.
