Monday morning, bright and early we were out on the stages again, finishing the remaining 4 stages, and then rechecking what we could during daylight. Tuesday was a rest day for Steve, while I joined some of our other visitors on the Jolly Roger cruise, and showed them how Bajans party. Wednesday and Thursday were spent rechecking all the stages and adjusting the notes, as Steve became more comfortable with the stages.

Friday, while driving the car to get an alignment done, we discovered a problem with the brakes. The brake bias valve had been installed incorrectly and, under braking, only the right front and left rear brakes would lock, making the car quite a handful under heavy braking. After the alignment was completed, (thanks to Sean Lashley, James Betts, Adam Alleyne and crew) we were off to SRG Engineering to get Simon Gillmore to try and sort the braking problem. When we arrived, we found Simon working on Walter Aitkins Escort, which had bent the axle at VRW the weekend prior. He quickly got them sorted and came over to us, all the while, ignoring his own car, to which he still was doing some fine tuning. An hour or so later, he had removed the faulty brake bias valve, run new brake lines, bled brakes and had us on our way. Thanks again Simon for the help.

My Saturday morning started at 4am, as I couldn't sleep, and I decided to go through the pace notes making sure that I had not made any mistakes in the typing of the final copy. Then I read the route book, to make sure that we had pace noted the triangles at Brighton and Haggets correctly, and learn the route between stages, so as to not waste time reading route on Saturday. I met Steve at the hotel for 8am and we headed up to the start at Simpson Motors.

Saturday morning went quite uneventful at first, with us getting a couple 2nd fastest in group stage times, and trying to keep Sean Gill in striking distance. Note the "trying" as this proved futile quickly. Then on the 3rd run at Haggets to Dark Hole we encountered rain, and were forced to drive on slicks, in the wet, at ICELAND. Well, that was quite the experience, and I got my first real insight into how good a driver Steve is. To make a long, hair raising story short, our best time on that stage in the dry was a 2m34.09s (supposedly the 4th fastest overall) and on the wet run we did a 3m07.34s which wasn't bad considering the car didn't want to turn or stop most of the time.

We returned to the lunch stop and were debating whether to put on wets for the runs at Brighton, Stewarts Hill and Malvern. I made a couple of phone calls to friends at the Brighton stage and was told it was dry, but overcast. We decided to take a gamble and keep on the slicks. This proved to be our undoing. As we sat on the start line at Brighton, I received two calls. First from Warren Gollop, who was marshalling on the Brighton section, telling me it had just started to rain there. Shortly after that Megan Blades, who was marshalling near the Kendal Pond, called to say that it was raining heavily there and the road was slippery. Well at that time, we could do nothing but drive the stage on the slicks, as we had already checked into the stage, and are forbidden to service once you have done so.

So we cautiously drove our way through the course, just trying to keep the car on the road. On approaching the Drax Hall left 90, we passed Geoff Noels Evo, off the road, with some noticable damage to the front, and a guard wall which bore the scares of a recent impact. Then as we attempted to make the left 90 ourselves, the car began to severely understeer towards a guard wall, and only Steve's quick thinking, of steering the car into a nearby cartroad, instead of continuing to try and make the turn, saved us from ending the rally there and then. In the end, we clocked a 7m17.16s for the stage, which was almost 3 minutes slower, when compared to our second run on wet tyres. After our bad luck with tyre choices, we decided to stay with the wets the remainder of the day, and were able to complete the day without further incident.

Once again Sunday morning, I was up at 4am, checking pace notes and route, waiting for the alarm to go off at 5. We arrived at Simpson Motors for the restart, to discover that we were 4th in group, 38 seconds behind Kirk Watkins, and a further 1m and 47s behind Neil Armstrong in second. We had been reseeded to 26th, and as a result were running on the road early. I made a couple of quick calls to my weather persons, and was informed that the first stage, Mt. Misery to Hangmans Hill was wet and muddy in areas. So we stayed with the wet tyres, and drove the stage with some degree of caution, doing a 3m48.29s. On the second run through there we did a 3m38.74s and on the final run improved by a further 3seconds, and thought we had narrowed our gap with Kirk by about 20seconds. We were to later find out (at the end of the rally) that Kirk's troublesome gearbox, finally called it quits on the last run at Mt. Misery, and we had inherited 3rd place.

Once again at the lunch stop we debated on tyre choice, but this quickly ended when we discovered that the left rear bottom arm had broken away from the body, and needed to be welded. Thanks to David Reece of Structural Systems for helping out in this area, and getting us underway without incurring any penalties for a late checkout.

We drove each of the afternoon stages on the wet tyres, and then switched to slicks for the 2nd run at Colleton. And as luck would have it, we had a nice dry road from the start, through Kendal Pond. As we went into the slight downhill after the pond, the first spattering of rain could be seen on the windshield, and less than 50ft later, the road was wet, and once again we were sliding uncontrablly towards another bridge wall, only this time there was no escape road. Steve once again proved his skill, and somehow managed to get the car around and up the straight and out of danger, but we were forced to take our time for the remainder of the stage and were 1m20s slower as a result.

So due to the horrible times we got on the wet, we thought we were now in 5th, still not knowing that Kirk had dropped out at lunch, or that Neil had blown his engine with 4 stages remaining. So in reality we had moved up to 2nd. We completed the last stage at Mapps, and congratulated each other on finishing the rally, and headed for VRW for the super special.

As we sat in line to enter the track, we developed a flat and had to drop out of sequence to change it, only to discover that the tyres we needed were not in the service vehicle, so we put on the Wets again and out onto the track against Simon Gillmore, who gave us a good run, but in the end Steve came across the line about a car length ahead of the Pug.

There are just too many persons that we would like to thank, and chances are, I will forget someone, but here goes. Thanks to all the marshalls who endured the heat, rain, mud, and abuse. Also to the organisers who pulled off an ambitious event. Thanks especially to Andy Behr and Roy, our service crew. And I cannot forget Warren Gollop and Megan Blades for their constant weather, and road condition reports. Of course thanks to Simon Gillmore and the SRG team for sorting the brakes, and Sean Lashley and crew for the use of their equipment. Thanks too, to Steve's sponsors, Empire Cigarettes and East Caribbean Metals Industries Ltd. And most importantly, I would like to thank Steve for giving me the opportunity to codrive for him. It was truly an amazing experience, and one I would readily repeat, should I ever find myself without a car to compete in.