Cetus Stages Rally 2016

Cetus Stages Rally 2016

What a day, who'd have imagined I'd be co-driving for two different drivers on the Cetus Stages. Certainly not me that's for sure... We'd initially put our entry in and I'd planned to sit next to Calvin Woods in his 1.0 Lupo on his second ever event. The new speed of sight stickers were also taking pride of place on the Lupo and even John Darlington put one on the rear of his Subaru Impreza. The Lupo had seen a suspension upgrade to new coil over shocks and stiffer 225lb springs on the front which transformed the cars handling.

After dinner things somewhat changed when the co-driver of car 7 fell ill. Mike approached me stating that if he didn't find another co-driver that was signed on to the rally (agreed with the MSA steward) then he would be forced to retire, he also needed someone who was running near the back of the field too. What an opportunity, I'd previously co-driven for Mike so I had to say yes. SO for the remainder of the afternoon, I was seen jumping out of Mikes Mk2 Escort into the VW Lupo of Calvin Woods to navigate them both around the circuit. This could only happen on a single venue stage rally and luckily because of the positioning of both cars I managed to successfully pull it off, but it was close making the time control between stage 10 by 1minute! It was pretty hot yesterday too, fire retardant suits, helmets and HANS devices as well as dashing between two cars between stages was hard work but paid off in the end with a trophy win.

The result for us on the Cetus Stages saw Calvin and me finishing 37th overall and 2nd in Class A (upto 1000cc) and finishing 6th overall and 2nd in class D (upto 2000cc) with Mike English (the event sponsor) in the Vauxhall powered Ford Escort.

Full Cetus Stages results can be found here.