A Frustrating Jim Clark For Team SG Petch
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006The SG Petch Scalextric Team experienced a torrid weekend as both cars suffered an incredible amount of bad luck on round 2 of the 2006 Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship, the Jim Clark International.
After good runs over the closed public lanes around Kelso in 2005 both Stephen Petch Junior and Rob Gill were full of confidence heading into the weekend. However Rob’s 2006 rally got off to the worst possibly start when the gear lever broke shortly after the start of the very first stage. Despite finishing the stage he chose to retire with plans to re-start under ‘super rally’ rules on Saturday.
Stephen also encountered problems on the opening stage, struggling with the balance on his car, a result of running with soft tyre pressures. He then lost more ground to those ahead of him as he struggled with a faulty fuel pump all afternoon and it was by sheer determination that he persevered through to the final service on Friday before the team was able to descend on the car and replace the faulty fuel pump, ready for Saturday’s action.
With the team restored to 2 cars for the 2nd day everyone was full of hope, but once again bad luck struck. Rob Gill suffered terminal clutch problems, a result of the strain of being stuck in 4th gear on Friday. And then Stephen was hampered by a problematic centre diff.
The unusual nature of the Jim Clark is notoriously tough on cars and quite a few of the Mitsubishi drivers were struggling with differential problems. All Stephen could hope for was that the car would hold together long enough to complete the rally, as the way cars were retiring around him he was set for a decent points haul in the Evo Challenge.