Racing at an event in Europe for a weekend was initially a daunting thought. Having done one weekend in Germany, I don’t think I appreciated how much harder it is to do two weekends in a row. Many people mentioned the word ‘holiday’ to me surrounding our trip to the last two rounds of the ERC. Be assured that for us it certainly didn’t feel like a holiday. Afterall, holidays are supposed to be relaxing. In September’s issue I suggested that we had learned our lesson about leaving enough time to get to the event with time in hand. Okay, this time we did arrive at the circuit on the Friday morning of the Polish round, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. We arrived at 7am on Friday morning, having travelled non-stop for 41hours on a journey that included a missed ferry, a brief stop with the Dutch Traffic Police and the delivery of some engines to a Belgian D2 ERC driver. Incidentally, the only reason we were able to go and race in Poland and Czech was down to the sale of the engines in question, and I was not able  to pay for the whole trip until we had completed that detour…

Although tired, we arrived in Poland optimistic that we had made some big steps forward to the setup of the Clio. A few hours spent on the corner weights was enough for me never to want to sit in the car again, but all for a good cause of course! We had the steering multiplier fitted and the pedal box had been adapted and repaired.

I had been warned about the scrutineers in Poland prior to going but, despite this, it was surprising how rigorous they were about the most bizarre things. They were more concerned with the laces on my race boots than the roll cage in the car – very odd. Everyone had also warned me about how slippery the track was and they were absolutely right, but from the moment I walked it, I really enjoyed it, even if it did highlight some of the floors we have with the Clio at the moment, most notably the power band problem I have explained previously and the gear ratios being far too long.

We were right to think the car would be better, and it was much more drivable. The result of it being more drivable is that I can drive it harder and the cost of that is the 100% reliability that we had previously achieved in Germany. The first example of this was in the first practice session in Poland, where we had the first of five engine mount failures over the two weekends. Overall Poland was a success, I had enough pace to actually be racing a few people, this led to the car’s first pannel damage as the front bumper was unceremoniously ripped off during a last gasp lunge up the inside of someone I had already overtaken before I took the Joker Lap. My fault, I had Jokered too early – another lesson learnt!

The demise of any holiday period was when the handbrake and gearbox both packed up on the Clio in the third heat. I jumped the first start because the handbrake went slack and the car moved, then lost drive on the first lap of the restart.

We removed the gearbox on the Sunday night to try and determine the problem, but could find nothing wrong. We made the decision to put the gearbox back in on Monday morning and see if we could solve the problem. Only this time, we had constant drive. Dave and I have never stripped and rebuilt the gearbox on my car so we were left with the daunting prospect of just that. We firstly fitted the totally standard gearbox to ensure that everything else was fine and it was. We only carry the standard box as a last resort, there was no way I would be starting with it in Czech. We stripped the gearbox and could see nothing. By this point we were still at the Polish circuit and it was Monday evening. Marty from Tony Bardy Motorsport had a look and couldn’t see anything either, so we decided to travel to Czech with Gordy (driving Derek Tohill’s Truck) and Marty. The journey itself over the next couple of day was an adventure all of its own, all I can say is that Polish roads have to be seen to be believed. Once at the Sosnova circuit in Ceska Lipa, Marty and Eric from TBM were incredibly kind in rebuilding my gearbox, although also unable to find any obvious fault. We refitted it to the car and all was fine again, so we spent a day or so repairing bodywork and other ailments. The Czech track is certainly special, and I now know why drivers love it so much. It’s the sort of circuit that really rewards commitment! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend enough time on it for me to get into a rhythm and really push hard. Again first practice in Czech didn’t go to plan and the clutch pedal not returning properly was cause for rolling to a halt in the first lap. Then in timed practice we broke another engine mount. We bodged it as best we could with the help of helicoils from Team Nomaco, this held out for the first heat, only for the handbrake problems from Poland to appear again. Unfortunately, we had more problems with the engine mount in warm-up on Sunday morning and it finally broke again on the line in the second heat. We tried another repair before making the decision not to go out for the third heat; the car wasn’t right, we wern’t going to make the C final and it could have ended up doing more damage and becoming a lot more costly. So we celebrated with Derek Tohill on the Sunday night before a three day journey home – one that consumed two trailer wheel bearings along the way.

So there we are, my first season and four events down. There have been times when I thought I would never get to drive the Clio, let alone be writing about racing in Poland and Czech. Future plans? Well, the first thing we need to do is sort out the engine mounts, have the gearbox totally checked by Gripper, the ratios changed, and get a bit more power and wider powerband from the engine. I plan to do one or two domestic winter events. As ever the financial side will be the biggest struggle, but there are six months before the first round of the ERC 2011…

We will be there, with just that little bit more experience to help along the way!