Most liked posts in thread: Rally 3 Costa Rica

We finished 2nd! but only just finished as the radiator and front end took a real beating! We won a few stages being close to the 2.0L N3 cars. Report and photos to follow.

Rally de San Carlos 2014 en vivo - Puro Motor

 

After the gearbox disaster on the previous rally, a lot of work has been done to resolve any future gearbox issues thanks to Gripper UK and Mini gearboxes UK. While I was in full paranoid mode I went through the Mini to look for any potential problems. I swapped the Throttle body with another off Ebay, then added a wide band 02 sensor gauge to monitor the air/fuel mixture and got the suspension aligned, both completed at Sicar Muflas.

The rally format for rally 3 was going to be 3 proper rally stages and 8 super special stages on the Sunday. We did the normal load up drive off the event early Saturday morning which now I’m getting good at as everything is in totes. Just load and go! Once we completed the 3 hour drive I swapped hats from driver to mechanic swapping over the road tyres to the Dunlop rally tyres then drove to the super special area to set up service. Our service takes all of 5 minutes to set up! A tarp and EZ-up canopy..hahaha

The region used for the rally is known for the extreme wet weather, forget cats and dogs, Yes it rains elephants and rhino’s! Around 1pm we did a convoy to the first stage to recce the route. SS1 was a nice fast flowing 5 km stage along some farm roads. SS2 was 1.8 km of the same type of gravel mud roads. As this was private land the owner only allowed 1 pass of SS1 and 2 passes of SS2.

With the notes done we headed back the super special to do the recce. The super special was around 4.5 km of tarmac, gravel and grass, by the time we got to do the recce the elephants and rhino’s came raining down making the recce impossible in any type of car due to the deep mud and zero visibility. The plan would be to recce on the day of the rally.

The rain continued all afternoon so we hung around the super special area as this was a huge under cover cattle market. Once we got back to the hotel it was race suits on then drive around 45minutes to a local town to parade the cars. I was amazed how many folks showed up despite the rain still bucketing it down.

Sunday’s rally 8am start was delayed by 1 hour because the ambulances were not in place. Finally we were on the start line with my confidence high that this rally was ours! The first stage was very slippery with all the nights’ rain. I was flat in 4th at around 90mph hitting some jumps with fine style; the Mini was pulling really well and sounded gorgeous blasting down the stage. We won the stage in N2 which to be honest I would expected due to the speed the Mini was going. hahaha

The next stage was across the road from the super special. We got there on time; waited in line as the first cars left the start line until a call was made for the doctor which halted the stage, two of the turbo 4WD’s went off due to the slippery conditions. Thankfully no one was hurt but the organizers decided to allow another recce which affectively canceled that stage. Once the recce was over the rally was back on, this stage was slight right/left 270mtrs tight right, 270mtrs tight left ,200mtrs tight right ,300mtrs tight right, 600mtrs to finish. When we did the recce I figured 3rd gear would do the corners……ooops WRONG. The corner I slide off the road but managed to control the slide and get back on track. So 2nd gear it was for those remaining corners, even with the little off we were still fastest in our class.

Next was a 30mins service then do the recce in the road car, the conditions were terrible. Even with a Hyundai Tucson the car kept bottoming out so I thought my goodness this is going to kill the Mini, we did the recce one way, turned around and did it the other way, hopped out the road car and back into rally mode! Now at this point confidence was a little too high as after only 500mtrs of the stage we took a jump which was not like the ones in the morning, finding that Mini’s are very front heavy. We hit the ground nose first which sent stones flying and my thought was of the poor radiator. All seemed well so I pushed on into a water splash, some tarmac and then left into the mud. On my goodness the mud was so deep the Mini was plowing through it with mud flying everywhere, the poor tyres fighting for grip as we slipped and clawed our way through. It was really bad and so slow. We cleared the mud and got some grip on the tarmac enjoying the speed until back on the mud using the Mini like a bulldozer!

This was pretty much the stage format, fast tarmac, very deep mud, gravel etc. Not exactly fun stuff but everyone else had to deal with it too, only the other cars didn’t have a ground sucking Mini! I tried to make up the pace on the tarmac and gravel sections but made a few errors traveling too fast back into the mud. BANG, CRASH went the front end. My co-driver was shouting “ Chris you’re going to destroy the car” which seemed likely. Once we finished that terror stage we had to go do it 2 more times!

The next run I took really slow but didn’t see any advantage as the Mini was still crashing into all the rocks. Every BANG I expected the rally to be over but we finished another stage. The next stage was a disaster! Part way though the stage something in the mud locked the right side front wheel up causing a clunk, clunk sound which I thought was the gearbox. Basically I had the left side wheel doing the driving which was painfully slow until the obstruction fell out about 800mtrs later. I figured I lost around 30 seconds which would be very difficult to pull back. With this stage over I nervously jumped out at service to view the damage, the lower front bumper and grill were all bent up with a ton of mud wedged into the radiator. I did my best to remove the mud and fix the grill.

With just 3 stages to go I needed to drop in a few gallons of fuel. The re-fueling area was near the time control so we had the helmets on ready to go. The only problem is another rally car would not move so we checked in late. We tried everything to move the other car but the idiot would not move. We were really angry when entering the stage so had to calm down. The next 2 stages were the reverse so pretty much the same banging and crashing around in the mud and gravel. When we got to the final stage the heavens opened so lucky for us the stage was canceled. I’ve never been so relieved to have a stage canceled! Once we got back to service I realized we were so lucky the stage was canceled. The mud from the 2 previous stages had compacted so much in front of the radiator that the mud pushed out the top grill and completely blocked all the air. Another stage would have seen us overheating.

Now the rally was over my co-driver had to go fight for the penalty caused by the late check in. Lucky for us the incident was viewed by several officials so the penalty was removed. It took about 1 hour to get the times in which saw us 2nd in class and 7th overall. Of course 1st would have been nice but with just 1 point difference between 1st and 2nd we were happy just to have finished. Now I have a weekend to fix the front end and check the Mini over before the next rally on October 19th.

As always a big thanks to my trusty co-driver Nela, Mo Joe’s, G-Oil, Sicar Muflas, EBC brakes, Automechanix, Dunlop.

 

Rally San Carlos Domingo - FOTOS DE PUROMOTOR.COM

 

3ERA FECHA DE RALLY 2014 on Vimeo after 4:35 there is some nice footage of the Mini.