With every event we go to with the Clio we make progress, and i’m not just saying that to make myself feel better about things. Belgium and Holland were no different to this form, but there were points during the events that it felt like it wasn’t going so well.

Scruiteneering in Belgium was tough, the hardest we have been to. The Clio got pulled and failed on all sorts of things that have always been fine in the past. One such example was the way ballast is held down and the fact it wasn’t lock-wired. These have been in the car since it was built, but all of a sudden they were an issue. By contrast, scruiteneering in Holland was very straight forward.

Once we did get onto the circuit in Belgium the car was feeling much better again than it has previously. The extra power from the exhaust manifold was making a good difference and we played with the set-up in practice which helped a lot. Sometimes we make a change to improve the set-up and I get in the car and its worse, but if we don’t try we will never know!

One thing the car is great at is getting on the startline. I have to say, throughout my time in Rallycross one thing I have always been good at is starting. People watching comment on the fact that I always move first, a split second reaction to the lights, and the car puts its initial power down well. However, when other peoples greater power and sequential gear boxes come into play we normally get out dragged to the first corner. In Belgium, we managed to still be in the mix after the first corner and this changes the race totally, not always jokering on the first lap and being in the mix a bit more.

 The rain came in timed practice, and during a damp and slippy session we were 22^nd fastest, which was very encouraging. I enjoy the slippy conditions, its not all about power and i’m comfortable with the car sliding around. Having said that, the wet was also my downfall in Belgium, but in a different capacity. We had a good couple of first heats, and in the third I was second for most of the race, until the penultimate lap. The circuit had been watered and was slippy, but when I entered the joker lap I hadn’t appreciated how wet it was, I was carrying far too much speed and ended up in the wall on the outside. I finished the heat, albeit slowly. It was just one of those things and I don’t regret pushing as hard as I did.

The damage was mainly superficial, so we got it patched up the next day at the circuit in preparation for Holland.

One thing of note was that my fastest lap in the second heat in Belgium would have been good enough for forth fastest when the British SuperNationals went to Belgium a month earlier, which gave me encouragement.

The week in between the two events was spent re-preparing the car, and going to the campsite near the Valkenswarrd circuit. It amazing who you meet and who has time to chat and discuss things when a lot of like minded people are together, but without the pressure of race day, and we certainly made some new friends, and weirdly some of those that I have been looking up to and admiring for years.

Holland was much more to my liking than Belgium, and practice in the dry went well. It was good that I knew my way around and I was starting to feel like I was on top of the car. The rain came down hard for timed practice, and we were 14^th (from 40ish) fastest! I was made up, the rain had played its part by falling harder near the end, but as we qued for the first heat it was brilliant being in one of the races near the end, instead on in the first couple as usual.

The first heat was still wet, I didn’t make a great start for a change and was last coming into the first corner. Everyone was bunching up on the inside, so I decided to try a do or die and go for the outside – and it worked. I ran second for the race, and it was all going really well until the last corner. I took too much kerb next to the exit of the joker lap and got a puncture, I then missed a gear and got very sideways coming into the last corner, and whilst saving it got a hit from behind, and again… and again, and ended up in the wall. I drove across the line but had even more damage and a rubbish time. Being punted me off didn’t even save the other guy any time, in fact it would have been faster for him to have not punted me off at all and followed me across the line, but such is life.

We got it repaired again, and the rain was even harder on Sunday morning. We opted to go for forest tyres for the second heat, and although it was a total unknown it worked, 3 seconds faster than Veltman, who has always been my benchmark and who we want to beat first. The third heat was set up to be good, and I really felt we could beat Veltman through the whole event on merit. I jokered on the first lap, feeling that with some clear air I could catch and pass the people in front, but a slower car behind chose not to joker, I caught them straight up and struggled to get past. I thought afterwards I probably lost two seconds, and that is the time we lost to Veltman, he beat us, but only just.

We want to make a lot more changes to the car, specifically suspension related, but we also still need more power. Other people just pull past us in a straight line. The week in between Belgium and Holland helped on both of these fronts, collecting ideas and help from others, notably some Scandinavian friends means that this winter I want to change the car significantly, and now we have learnt from what we have already done I really think we can find a lot more time yet.

When we started with the Clio we were 12+ seconds a heat behind the C final sort of pace. Now we are within a second of that, but it’s so much harder and more expensive to find the tenths than the seconds.

I won’t be in Austria or Poland, some bills need settling before I go anywhere else, but we are going to patch the car up and go to Czech for the last round if we can, last year was a great event but we didn’t get far due to reliability problems. Then it will be planning for next year … we are defiantly moving in the right direction.