In the second update from overseas, a disappointing day for both Scott Pedder in China and Eli Evans in Estonia with both drivers entering early retirement on the side of the road.
Scott Pedder
“It looks like the balance bar on the brake bias has wound itself all the way one way, because on the transport out to the first stage we had a rock hard brake pedal.”
“Added to that we’d noticed the intercom was playing up, it seemed like an electrical problem somehow connected to the antilag because as soon as I switched the antilag on it’d cause interference in the intercom.”
“Basically going into the very first corner of the first stage I had no brakes at all, and the car went off the road. We managed to get back on the road but about 25 kilometres into the stage, in a series of 3 or 4 corners, Damian was calling the notes and the intercom cut out again, I missed the last note he called which just happened to be the tightest corner of the bunch and we went off again.”
“We got an immediate front right puncture, but we got going again trying to find somewhere to pull over and change it, but being a desert road there is just no where to stop so we drove the last 8km to the stage finish, which in doing so broke the drive shaft.”
“So yeah, all that on the first stage and by the end of it we had to park the car up for the rest of the day. Luckily I got to enjoy the local hospitality with about two or three thousand new friends.”
“It’s crazy, you’re out in the desert competing in a rally and at the stage end the locals have setup a market, and easily there would have been a couple of thousand people there. So yes, a little bit different to any stage end I’ve ever seen at an ARC!”
“We will get the car fixed overnight and then restart again tomorrow. So far we haven’t had a stage without a problem, so it’d be nice to have a clean day. I’ll also make some changes to the car tonight, it’s a good car it just needs some development to be even better.”
“The good news is our VW team mate Chris Atkinson is leading outright by over a minute, and the sister cars to my Golf are leading 2WD 1-2.”
Eli Evans
“A really tough day! The first stage was ok, it started raining and I just wanted to go out and get into a rhythm because I had no idea how fast the other boys (2WD) would be pushing in the wet.”
“Then on the next stage, the long stage, the engine kept coming off throttle and we didn’t know why, which was extremely distracting. Our stage time was ok but it could have been much better. We had service straight after and the guys reset the parameters on the ECU which seemed to improve the problem.”
“Then the third stage was a repeat of the morning’s first stage, and I wanted to push because I was 21 seconds behind the leading 2WD, plus the team boss had given me the instruction to ‘hunt him down’.”
“In the stage there is a big jump, which I’d taken flat out with no problem the first run through, but maybe this time I was carrying more road speed. Nothing crazy, it was just a really fast jump and the car landed nose heavy. I didn’t think anything of it, I landed went down a gear and drove on for another 2 or 3 kilometres before we ran out of water from a cracked radiator.”
“The next stage was 28km long and with no water left in the radiator there was nothing we could do. I think the big lesson for me now is learning how to jump a Civic Type-R, we just don’t get a lot of big jumps in the ARC but over here almost every crest is a big jump.”
“Look it is disappointing but at the same time I was happy with how the rest of the weekend was going. I’m disappointed because I wasn’t able to execute what I came here to do. We showed we have the speed and the car performed really well.”
“I came here to Estonia to do my best, unfortunately it didn’t go my way, but I still leave relatively happy.”
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