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2009/09 - Patriot Stages Rally Caerwent (0 images) - created by Adge on 02/10/2009 at 12:43:55
A nice sunny day greeted Adrian and Mark to the penultimate round of the 2009 BTRDA Asphalt Series Championship. Held over 7 stages of 10 miles each at the former MOD munitions factory in South Wales with its myriad tight and twisty roads with kerbs everywhere to catch out the unwary, finishing is always an achievement with usually nearly 50% of the entries not getting to the end, such is the demanding nature of the venue.

After being the 1st BTRDA competitor on the recent Mewla Rally, which moved Adrian into 2nd O/A and Mark 1st O/A, the team were relieved to have finished the rally after it was discovered during routine maintenance that a selector fork had broken in the gearbox which if the rally had gone any further, a catastrophic failure of the gearbox could of occurred.

After finally getting and replacing the part, the gearbox was refitted the day before the rally and the car restored back to full health.

With the venue not being one of Adrian and Marks favourites and with a host of other championship rivals present, it was going to be a tough day.

At least with it being dry, tyre choice was going to be less of a problem, although getting some heat into them for the early part of the stages meant that the handling was entertaining for the 1st mile or so.

Stage 1 went well except for a few moments early on due to the cold tyres and Adrian and Mark were already 7th O/A up from their 14th start number. Stages 2,3,4 passed without incident with Adrian and Mark setting top 10 times to move to 5th. Championship rival Gary Le Coadou hit problems on stage 3, retiring with gearbox and hub problems.

However on stage 5 Adrian and Mark hit problems themselves when a rear drive shaft came out of the diff which cost over 15 secs. The repair at service proved not to have fixed the problem as the same thing happened again on just the 3rd corner of stage 6 which cost the boys a further 3 minutes and effectively halted their challenge to catch the leading BTRDA contenders.

Sterling work by Steve and Paul replacing the rear diff in 10 minutes at the final service, Adrian and Mark just made the time control with 3 seconds to spare.

Setting 4th quickest time through the final stage moved them back up from 10th to 8th O/A but more importantly from 4th to 3rd BTRDA competitor. This result means that Adrian has now moved into the lead of the championship by 1 point, but Mark has dropped to 2nd by 2 points.

With 1 round to go the championship couldn't be closer and all Adrian has to do is beat Mark Welch over the Otterburn Ranges on the 25th October to clinch the title, however for Mark to win, they need to beat Mark by 3 points as it is his codriver Andy Wynn who leads the codrivers championship by 2 points and with all the championship regulars present it will be a closely fought battle.