Rally Report MEM Malton Forest Rally 2019
On the 3rd Nov the Laser Tools Rally team headed up to the North Yorkshire forests for the 2019 Malton forest rally offering 45 miles of fast forest tracks over 2 loops of three stages and over 100 miles of liaison using the public roads and with only 3 service intervals of 15 minutes car reliability would be very important.
The previous night before the rally saw some very heavy rain so the stages would be very greasy on the first run through so a cautious approach would be required. With a short road section of only 7 miles we set off into the first stage not knowing what the grip level would be like but quite surprisingly other than a few large areas of standing water that caused a bit of aquaplaning the grip level wasn’t too bad and with Jemma doing a fantastic job of reading the pace notes and warning me of any really slippy corners we completed the first stage with no issues in a respectable 3rd in class 4. Growing in confidence stage 2 was a bit faster and all was well as we headed for 3 where we started to push the pace to keep our class position and other than a couple of small incidents and a close call at a square left where I missed the braking point the morning stages had gone well and we were still 3rd in class only 10 seconds behind 2nd.
After a quick check over at the halfway service we set off back to repeat the loop of three stages which had now got a little rougher after the 4WD cars had been over them but we still pushed on and we were holding 3rd in class with two stages left. These stages required a little bit of caution as there was quite a few big rocks exposed on the stages now and we didn’t want to damage the suspension so we maintained our pace and secured 3rd in class which gave us maximum points in the championship as we beat all the east midlands championship class 4 entrants and from this we have now secured the class 4 gravel championship for 2019.
A huge thank you goes to Anthony Windle on the spanners and refreshment all day, to all my family for their support this year and finally to Laser Tools for the continued support for the 2019 season.
