On Saturday September 14th, first stages of the Hills Ford Rally took place across Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire. The annual event is a celebration of close road rallying, allowing drivers to take their vehicles across hundreds of miles of picturesque English countryside and experiencing a variety of road conditions. The Jigsaw Business Group is proud to yet again sponsor a car for the event, with one of our regular contractors taking to the track over the weekend.
For those who don’t know how rallying works, it’s more of an endurance race rather than a sprint. To be successful, drivers must maintain a steady pace over the course of an entire day. Consistency, both in speed and error count, is key to maximising driving efficiency. Vehicles must also be able to adapt to the diverse challenges presented by the public roads used for the race. Each car on a stage sets off at a predetermined interval, with times recorded every stage. This reduces the chance of competitors being impeded by each other. It’s common for a stage rally to have between 10 and 15 stages which are driven over the course of multiple days.
It was a tarmac event so the wide track micra came out to play. Practice was on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning before that rally started Saturday afternoon, with 2 stages and a further 10 stages on Sunday. The format being that each stage was done twice.
Stages 1 & 2 went well and on the second time around we went 6 seconds quicker. The challenge was that on the return to the service park, the car started to run very roughly and eventually we had to stop on a road section. But the major result was that Lawrence and Mick had been spectating on the stages and were able to quickly come and rescue us. They towed us back to service where we pushed the car over the arrival control, thus avoiding any penalties. The team then proceeded to replace the alternator, fire up and ensure that the car would start again for the Sunday morning stage. It’s great having such a dedicated and enthusiastic service crew.
The clips below are from the Saturday stages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJDDf9XYuoo&t=8288s
Sunday started with some delays as a few cars in front had incidents, although luckily nothing serious. Stage 3 was 7.5 miles long and we completed this in 7 minutes 24 seconds. This meant that we averaged over 60 mph on that stage. We even caught the car in front which meant he dropped a minute to us, although it also slowed us down a little as we caught him about 1.5 miles from the end of the stage.
Here is the interview at the end of this stage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dimDNsUAkRs&t=8989s
The next few stages were good, we had managed to be 2nd in class after having been joint second at the start of the day. The next real kicker was on stage 7 when a red flag was waived and we had a “nominal” time given to us. This wasn’t a representative time for us at all and dropped us back in the overall standings. Nevertheless, we were still 2nd in our class of up to 1400cc. The next few stages became a little interesting as there was a short storm that made the roads damp but not wet. We decided to stay on our existing tyres, even though my engineer (Lawrence) was pushing to change the fronts. This was not possible as on the previous stage the hydraulic handbrake had broken and fixing that was more important. It was found that a circlip had come out of the master cylinder.
Onto the last 2 stages. The next stage I drove like a complete woos as I was a little (a lot) nervous of the road conditions – was it going to be slippy or very slippy. In the end it was Ok but we did drop some seconds in time. Onto the last stage, and here I was fired up for a good time, which we did. We had an overall time that was 46th fastest in the complete event, which had 120 cars at the start.
At the Jigsaw Business Group, we’re always looking for ways to engage with local communities and offer support. It’s one of the things that drives us in our business improvement services. We take a particular interest in the automotive industry as we recognise the importance of transportation in today’s world. In the UK especially, automotive manufacturing is thriving and we’re proud to be a part of it. You can read about what we’ve achieved for our clients in this space in our case studies. Then, if you think we’re a good fit for your business, simply get in touch to chat about the support you need.
