The last round of the ANCC championship and I knew we had to finish 14th or higher in class to beat Jon Neale/John McNichol for places. Having seen the forecast of snow flurries I gambled on not taking my full complement of slicks, instead favouring knobblies, wets and inters, with a couple of slicks just in case to run on the front if I had to.
So to the day and its SUNNY! I went out on inters but had no rear grip. By stage 3 I was losing the rear and had a couple of 1/2 spins. The front was OK but anywhere near pushing it through the bends had me on opposite lock holding on for the apex of the bends. The problem being that at Croft there are a number of tightening bends. Obviously letting off to scrub off speed under these conditions will just make the rear let go irrespective of whether the brakes are used or not.
It was a bitterly cold day and we (the service crew of Malcolm, Jim and Michelle) decided that the front inters were working correctly with heat being built up in them but the rears were clap cold!
John McNichol arrived and by stage 5 had us fitting the slicks to the rear. This instantly made the rear hang on and by 1/4 lap I could stuff it in really late and it just bit.

We were now in the top 20 in class and I needed to take 40 seconds back to reach the required position. At the beginning of stage 6 the organisers let us know that stage 8 was cancelled due to the time lost in between stages. This was a bit of a let down as I needed more stage miles to get the time back. So with lights fitted we went out in the dark for stage 7. I havent driven in anger in the dark since the days of road rallying in the 80's but I must say that it was very enjoyable with the car handling well again and taking some of the chicanes flat in 4th we must have been the quickest that we had been all day!
John had stayed all day in a helping/spectator capacity and after all that we failed to grab enough points, having finished 45th O/A and 15th in class, to take his position in the championship with just 6 points separating them from us.
After a years rallying we look to have got 3rd/2nd overall in ANCC with various class places and we both enjoyed most of it using a home built shoestring budget car and not having the best of anything but having to make do with some dubious parts/tyres and not eating correctly for our sport. Now comes the time where we have to step back having achieved our task and being relatively successful in it for our first championship and very new to rallying, we will still be involved deeply with Trackrod but maybe not as much on the competing side. Thanks go to Malcolm and Jan Jagger, Jim and Michelle Plevey, Steve Lancaster, Simon and Caroline Marston and anyone who has advised, imparted knowledge to us in our quest for greatness.

G.Steggles.