54th Omloop Van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders)

[mef]

This weekend we are competing on the Tour of Flanders rally, see http://www.omloopvanvlaanderen.be for details. We are seeded at car 41, there are several other GB crews, see the entry list here: http://www.omloopvanvlaanderen.be/uploa ... %20Alf.pdf

This will be our 4th attempt at this event, 1st time in the BMW, we missed it last year with engine woes. The 3 other times we did it in the Citroen C2R2.

Recce is Thursday/Friday morning, scrutineering Friday afternoon the the start is on Friday evening, 2 stages in the dark then a long day of stages on Saturday, should be fun!

Have a look at this stage called "Zoning" it's a bit of fun for the speccies, takes place around an industrial estate near Roeselare town centre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f55w8xn3WJ0

Looking forward to it now!

Martin

[cbgb]

We are 4 cars behind you Martin , if its as good as last year , we are in for a cracker

[mef]

It wasn't a good event for us this year, after a good days recce the first stage was OK then the second stage was cancelled due to a crash involving 2 top cars and an electric pylon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd-0mo3lRQo

So we restarted day 2 down in 61st overall which seemed quite poor, I was surprised how low we were, I dont think I could have gone any quicker on SS1, the spotlights were amazingly good, just not enough local knowledge! We did SS3 Passendale and it seemed to go well then Ss4 was cancelled as I believe a farmer decided he didn't want rally traffic near his farm. We moved up 9 places so that was encouraging. We were in a team of 3 cars run by Charles Schmid racing, he also runs a 1 series, this time Steefan Prizie was driving it, sometimes Patrick Snijers drives for him (we met Patrick briefly) and also an E36 3 series M3 with an M54 engine. Charles kindly offered to include us with his service setup which was great!

After service we went to do Ss5 which at 19.5Kms was the longest stage in the rally. All started off fine, saw a C2R2 badly crashed (they slowed us down as the wreckage was in a bad place) then a few corners further on it was our turn! A long 750 straight down a main road then acute hairpin left on gravel, I braked, turned in and gave it the usual quick blip of handbrake but before the back end could come out the front end just didn't turn in, it washed out with understeer on the gravel and the nose of the car went into a deep ditch, a small tree and bushes bringing us to a halt, the car became solidly wedged on its chassis rails on the edge of the tarmac and rear wheels up in the air (well one was just touching the road). That was it, stuck solid. No amount of spectators pulling on the tow rope whilst I was trying to get some traction from the one wheel that was just touching the road. We gave up in the end, it was just impossible to move such a heavy car, especially since the heavy engine end was pointing down 30 degrees into this ditch.

We slowed the remaining oncoming competitors as the car was in a very precarious position then the safety officer decided that since there were 6 other cars off in the stage that he would get them all extracted before he sent the Historics through. A guy turned up with a flatbed transporter with an electric winch that pulled us out very easily. We inspected the damage and saw that it was just the wing & bumper really, no mechanical or suspension damage so we drove back to service and retired from the event.

Later we went to watch the "Zoning" spectator stage, 4 laps around the local industrial estate, we noticed several cars missing, including Craig Burgess's R2 Fiesta, later we saw that he'd also retired after having a similar engagement with a ditch, also similar damage too.

Prinzie crashed out after the flying finish of a stage later in the afternoon doing some serious damage to Charles Schmid's 1 series, the other 3 series came 29th overall.

So, that was it, we still enjoyed ourselves but it was very disappointing not to do more stages and get to the end of the event this time.

Maybe next year?

Martin

pics to follow

[bruvs1]

Unlucky there Foxy! Great event and we would love to have a dabble there! Don't think isle of man even comes close to Belgium for the whole experience, some great footage of the event on YouTube too, B-)

[mef]

Yes, Unlucky is exactly correct, it wasn't really a driving error as such or bad notes, it just caught me out by the front end sliding wide unexpectedly and it was virtually at walking pace, all braking was done too! I knew it was a gravelly corner, just one of them things! I wasn't showing off to speccies or doing anything heroic even, just bloody unlucky!

Martin

[is-si]

Bad luck martin, we followed progress on saturday and ultimately saw the facebook photo. The ditch looked unfortunately steep
Glad you enjoyed the rest of the weekend though

[mef]