Given the fact that we as competitors only had 7hrs in which to complete all of our pace notes, I believe that we did all that we could have to complete the task. None of us even took break that day to get lunch due to time constraints, and still we were all very far short of finishing that day. This essentially means that we really did not have a realistic chance at competing at the highest level, without either the local knowledge OR very good pace notes. This is the reason why I took the decision to drive well within my capacity and the car's so as to be around at the end. As it turned out the car made sure that there was little point doing anything different, because like Adrian & Jonathan Linton, we broke a right front drive shaft on the first corner of the first stage and continued to the end of that stage confirming our suspicions. We continued to the next stage, so this meant that both of these stages were completed in rear wheel drive only, and in both instances we were about 40 seconds off the pace. After this we went to service and changed the broken shaft and returned to the stages having incurred another 5 minutes of late penalties while replacing the drive shaft. The stages to come after at Bybroke & Wakefield of which there were 8 of them were very good stages, relatively smooth and interesting with up hill, down hill jumps, water splash, few long straights, as in the very rough Bernard lodge and Caymannas stages which were 1.5 and 2 kms straights with 90 degree bends and deep drainage ditches on each side. Here we were still faced with the problem of poor and inaccurate pace notes, but the roads could be enjoyed by anyone in any type of car. Soon after this day 1 was complete and we were heading for Kingston and service.

Day 2 started and we were re-seeded to 4th overall and running 3rd on the road based on our stage times only, and soon after the restart the Mitsubishi of Gore was also now out with transmission failure, and we were now second on the road, which is where we would have finished without all of the lateness penalties.

Roger Skeete