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16 June, 2010 BARBADOS REPRESENTATION IN GERMAN RALLY
Kickastra Team Codriver Enters Rallye Thueringen

Following a successful debut and class win of the teams rebuilt A7 Vauxhall Astra GSi in Rally Barbados, the normal resident of the codriver’s seat Jonathan Linton has decided to enter the German Rallye Thueringen. 

The Rallye Thueringen is based in the South Eastern Germany.  2010 will be the 49th edition of the Sparkassen-DMV-Thuringen Rally 2010 by the organizer, the Motorsportclub Poessneck e.V.  It is a 134 km all Tarmac Rally with very technical stages making pace notes essential.  The rally starts on Friday 18 June 8 p.m. with a 17 km stage followed by a special stage in the host city of Poessneck at 10 p.m.  The longest stage is a 23 km test on Saturday.

The team built and maintain an Opel Astra OPC in Germany prepared for FIA group N3, which the team successfully completed a hat trick of WRC finishes in 2006, 2007 and 2009.  Jonathan decided to try a hand at driving his own car and entered as Car 000 on the Rallye Gruenhain in 2009.  He is now hoping to get more familiar with his Opel Astra OPC, test new tarmac suspension settings and make steady improvement over the event.

Once again the team will be supported by Team AutoScharf led by the team’s close friend Tobias Scharf.  Tobias has his work cut out prior to the event as his own Opel Astra OPC Turbo suffered a rare accident on the Sachsen Rallye just weeks prior.  In addition, the Kickastra Team’s Astra OPC requires final assembly following a full rebuild after the 2009 Rally Finland.  Team AutoScharf will be working long hours from their base in Lauter, Germany to prepare both cars in preparation for the event.

Jonathan will be codriven by Frank Haustein, a friend of Tobias’.  Jonathan will have to put his German knowledge to good use as the pace notes will be taken and read in German.

The Kickastra team would like to thank main sponsor Ravensden, who have been unwavering in the team’s support, Team AutoScharf, John Sealy from the BMF for supporting the entry requirements and the Rallye Thueringen organizers for allowing special permission to enter the event past the close of entries.

Kickastra Rally Team

31 May, 2010 Rally Barbados 2010 - Event Overview

Following the build of Kickastra Evo III, the car was debuted at the Dark Hole Speed Event.  The handling was not the best, and we suffered from gearbox problems - 3rd gear dogs among other things.

The gearbox was rebuilt with 3rd gear, 6th gear, the crown wheel and pinion and diff bearing being replaced.

The car's next outing was King of the Hill - the "shakedown" and seeding event for Rally Barbados.  After a reasonably good time on the practice run, I succeeded in rolling the car very gently at about 3 MPH.  In spite of this, we managed to bend every panel on the car as well as smashing the windscreen so badly that we were not able to take further part in the event.  

This then set the stage for 6 days of mad scrambling to get the car ready for Rally Barbados, starting with dropping the car at the bodywork man immediately after the event so he can start straightening the roofline over the front windscreen to accept the new glass.  A new windscreeen was sourced on Tuesday and was fitted on Wednesday after Andy (the bodywork man) had done some "dressing up" of his initial straightening.  There were then a number of late nights/early mornings to fit the new navigator seat, sumpguard, door mirrors, kill switch cable, and relocation of passenger lap belt mounting eye.  We managed to also squeeze in a wheel alignment and a spanner check.  After the drama, we were ready for Rally Barbados (with a few hours to spare).

Onto the rally itself.  Jonathan arrived on Friday afternoon and took ownership of pace notes written by nephew Dominic the previous day.  

RB10 Day 1
The car felt ok generally, but the handling was definitely off.  A variety of adjustments in the course of the morning to the rear shocks improved things somewhat, but it still wasn't quite to our liking.  More to follow...

RB10 Day 2
The second stage of the morning looked to be wet, so we took the slicks and put on wets (RA-1s).  The stage turned out to be pretty dry, but the tyres made a huge difference the handling and the feel of the car, so we decided to leave them on for the rest of the day.  The confidence level was much better, and the times reflected this.  Apart from the lurid moment braking into Kendal corner from 100+MPH on a freshly sprinkled road and narrowly missing ploughing into the crowd who were blocking the escape road, the day was relatively uneventful.  A spectator noted that in a L-R-L-R combination of corners, the front wheels were less than 2 inches from the curbs on each cut.  Navigator Jonathan confirmed this during the rally, remarking that the edges of scenery were often approaching uncomfortably close to the extremities of the car, indicating absolute full use of the road and grip.  

Result?  There was one!...First in class, a welcome result after last year's RB09 retirement while leading the class.  

Provision results available at this link.

More details to follow...

Adrian Linton

May, 2010 Vauxhall Astra GSi Evo Ready to KickAstra
linton.jpg

Edited article by Corey Reece

"We were having handling issues all day. Shortly after the start of the last Canefield run we made a cut and the back ‘stepped out' then ‘snapped back' causing the front to hit an embankment. From there we spun, hitting the rightside-back. We continued on briefly, then the oil light flickered and we pulled off. We damaged the radiator, cross-member, bent the subframe and lost oil as the oil cooler lines had been cut."

This ended Rally Barbados 2009 for brothers Adrian and Jonathan Linton and saw the end of their Vauxhall Astra " KickAstra Evo 2"and the building of Evo 3. Given that Evo 2 was built from scratch in 16 days, there were a number of things which needed attending to but were never done. So, Adrian decided to do all the necessary things in the building of Evo 3. The decision was made to reshell  and refresh the car, get rid of all the unnecessary wiring to drop some weight and to engineer an independent suspension set up with softer Proflex spring rates to have the car up to scratch. This required some shifting of the fuel tank, but it was decided that a fuel cell would have been a better option.

 The extra underbody space also allowed for a straight exhaust to run from the engine. In the re-shelling, Adrian added some fender flares to the car. Anyone knowing Adrian would know that the flares, though aesthetically pleasing, serve a purpose as they have remedied the problem of tires rubbing on the fender which the previous car suffered from. 

In the engine department, not much was done other than relocating a few things in the engine bay. The car is in dire need of re-mapping, something which Adrian says should squeeze some more speed from the engine. This along with having the suspension fully sorted he believes should go a long way in making the car quicker across the stages. Following a noise from the gearbox during the MCBI Dark Hole event, Linton has had to pull the gearbox down, causing him to trade his driver boots to fill navigator shoes for David Brewster in the Automotive Art Shakedown Stages.

Looking ahead, the intention is for the Linton brothers to contest the Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) Ypres (pronunciation  EE-preh) Rally in Belgium. The rally was opted for after the Opel Astra OPC no longer had a valid homologation for the World Rally Championship (WRC). There is also a hope of entering Rally Jamaica, an event Adrian said he has never completed as a result of various mechanical misfortunes.

In the not too distant future, we may also see another Linton becoming more actively involved in local rallying. His son Dominic will get to see firsthand the competitive side of the sport after his exams are over. The young Combermere student was actually responsible for pace noting whilst Jonathan was still overseas in the lead up to Rally Barbados 2009. A drive is not far away as Adrian joked that there is a whole race car lying around the house, albeit in parts. Best wishes to the Lintons from Zhaust.com in the 2010 Motorsport Season.

Article reproduced from Zhaust.com

01 April, 2010 Its Here!  Kickastra EVO III!

Details to follow...

   
06 Feb, 2010 New Rally Finland Onboards!

Onboard videos of Rally Finland below:

SS1 - Killeri
SS4 - Mokkipera


Enjoy!

The Kickastra Rally Team
 

09 August, 2009 Rally Finland - The Story - Part1 and Prequel

See Rally Finland 2009 page for the first installment of the Rally Finland story.  More to come...