Dale’s Blog from Rally Norway

Here I am in a very chilly Norway ahead of this weekend's WRC event.  I'll be sitting alongside Russian Evgeny Novikov in a Citroen C4 WRCar as part of the newly formed Citroen Junior Team.  Here's what we've been up to in the lead up to the rally.

We started our prep for the rally with a two day test with PH-Sport last Saturday and Sunday in the Citroen Junior team's test car. All went to plan and we really did have a great time getting up to speed with what’s required to hurtle these WRC cars through the snow covered roads up here. Obviously this event will be our first taste of the C4 in battle, so it was good to clock up a few k’s to get a bit more comfortable in the car and the way the scenery seems to whiz by that bit faster...
 
Recce went well also except it got down to -31 degress C (!!) on Wednesday morning and we had to stop to change a puncture. Man, that is the quickest tyre change I have ever done I can tell you...  All good there, though, and we are quite happy with the notes for the rally.

Shakedown this morning went to plan as well. We did four passes pretty much straight away with no changes needed, so it was good to get some last minute time in the car before the SSS tonight.

The rally car is obviously an '08 spec so there are a few small differences to the test car but all good. We ended up posting a time of 2:04.9 on our fourth and last pass which was quite good, actually. We took it quite easy in the nasty bits and our runs were all at the start before the road swept too much so even though we weren't pushing for a time, we were quite happy with that and most importantly, the car felt great.

So we're off to the SSS stage tonight where the real action begins. Hopefully we can stay focussed tomorrow and learn at our own pace. It’s going to be difficult to not get caught up in what everyone else is doing but we will just do our best to get through unscathed. The roads are very technical in the first Leg so we will have to keep our wits about us. Oh, and it's Friday the 13th, too!!
 
Cheers for now,
 
Dale

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