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General Photos
Preparation Photos #1
Preparation Photos #2
Preparation Photos #3
Photos - Sun Nov 25 in Wales

Photos during rally

INTERVIEW

BHP Motorsports - Interview with Adrian on his WRGB experience
 

Still more WRGB07 Photos...

More photos now posted from our adventure.  Click on the WRGB07 main page for photos and videos and all information.
 

More WRGB07 Photos...

More photos now posted from our adventure.  Click on the WRGB07 main page for photos and videos and all information.
 

LINTONS FINISH WALES RALLY GB FOR SECOND YEAR
Toughest rally for many years

Despite facing the toughest conditions even the most hardened regulars could remembers for many years, double Barbados Rally Club (BRC) Champion Adrian Linton and brother Jonathan "had a blast" on Wales Rally GB, the deciding round of the 2007 World Rally Championship.
For the second year in a row, the Lintons enjoyed their moment of glory on the finishing ramp, this time outside City Hall in Cardiff; they improved on their result of 2006 by seven places, finishing 74th of the 84 crews classified. The 114 crews which started the three-day event, including six Land Rovers from the British Armed Forces Rally Team, represented 34 countries.
And the Lintons are edging closer to the World's best! Their total elapsed time of 5h 08m 0.07s showed an improvement of 30 minutes over last year, and they were roughly the same margin closer to this year's winners, Finland's Mikko Hirvonen and Jarmo Lehtinen in the BP Ford World Rally Team Focus RS WRC 07 . . . although still 1h 45m 09.8s behind!
While they do not expect their Opel Astra OPC to be troubling the works teams in the immediate future, Adrian was very happy with the outcome on his return to the island: "Wales Rally GB was great, although it wasn't without its challenges. We couldn't have done it without fantastic support from our families and Ravensden, which was once again our main sponsor. We also had some assistance from Maurice Straker Construction and Gale's Hatcheries, and it was great to find Freddie Gale supporting us on stages, along with a gang of UK-based Bajan fans - that kind of support just means so much I can't tell you."
BRC chairman Mark Hamilton, who experienced the British forests in Rally Yorkshire earlier this year, was quick to praise their efforts: "Now I have had a taste of the terrain myself, I can appreciate their achievement all the more . . . especially when you note that Rally GB's longest stage is around 28 kilometres, and that one stage represents a quarter of Rally Barbados! Well done to Adrian and Jonathan on a good result to round off our 50th Anniversary season."

The Astra has come a long way since last year, when it was in essence a road car fitted with a roll cage; new suspension components provided more flexibility in ride height, while a weight loss programme and fitment of a dog box with close ratios and low final drive combined to make the car faster.

Linton reports: "Our times were quicker than last year, in spite of a general trend of times being slower across the board. The increased ride height paid off, with only minor nicks and dings in the sump guard and no bouncing off bits of forest track. The gearbox and the ratios were also much better - I would still say that we are not quite on a par with the Ford Fiesta STs in the group, but we are a lot closer and the car is much more entertaining to drive".
After the Ceremonial Start on Thursday evening, the weather took a turn for the worse, with fog on Friday's stages seriously hampering visibility; four-times Rally GB winner Petter Solberg's Welsh co-driver Phil Mills said: "I've never seen conditions like it, the fog was on the bonnet!" Heavy rains during the afternoon further exacerbated the conditions, particularly for the amateur runners at the end of the field, such as the Lintons.
As Adrian recalls: "The stages were more slippery than last year, and the fog on the night stages was really thick - we could not see from corner to corner. On day two, the stages also seemed to cut up worse than last year, maybe because of the rain. Having said that, I again thoroughly enjoyed the run through Walters Arena on the Friday . . . the combination of corners here, also a similar section fairly early into the Crychan stage on Saturday morning, were just a joy to drive.

And we did make it to the Millennium Stadium this year . . . although I nearly fluffed that when a serious case of the nerves and a touch of over-exuberance almost saw us T-bone the wall before going up over the jump into Stadium. With the air horns, lights and 25,000 cheering fans, the atmosphere in there is just unreal."
Mechanically, the Astra held up well; the Lintons were helped this year by a service crew from CAM Sport, based near Swansea, and engineers from Autoscharf in Germany, who volunteered to fly in to help, having built the Astra's dog box. A heavy landing in Walters Arena required a new front engine mount and radiator mount at the Friday lunchtime service - incurring 50 seconds of lateness penalties in the process - then on the day's final stage, the Astra dropped on to three cylinders.

As Adrian explains: "We pulled off and had a look, but couldn't find anything obvious, so continued, dropping around eight minutes. The guys from Autoscharf hooked up their laptop to the diagnostic port and identified the number three injector as faulty; they found a bad connection, then cushioned the wiring harness with rope and duct tape."

Day two was fine, apart from the crew changing a bottom arm as a precautionary measure, then a slight seepage from the fuel tank at the end of the day; on the final day, however, the left-side CV joint failed on the first run through the Trawscoed stage, but the Lintons had done enough to be classified.
Adrian's final words on the family's second experience of the World Rally Championship were these: "The car finished in one piece, Jonathan and I had a blast, and my son Dominic shook hands with Tommi Makinen. Oh, and although German Schnapps is good, Mount Gay Extra Old is better!"
 

Job Done...

...that's the favorite phrase of Dai, our chief service mechanic and proprietor of C.A.M Sport in Cwmgors, Wales, which summarizes our Wales Rally GB 07.  We drove up on the finish ramp as #77 finisher on Sunday.  It was a tough rally, but we made it.

We will be making a full report of the rally, but in the meantime we will be posting photos and videos as quickly as possible on our site.

Click on the WRGB07 main page for photos and videos and all information.

Stay tuned for the full rally report...
 

...Welsh Forests, Here We Come!

After the shock dramas, everything fell in to place, more or less - except for the service tent blowing down overnight.... again! (see WRGB06 story)  Luckily, only two of the poles were slightly damaged, and the tent was put up properly with the help of our Service Team C.A.M. Sport, based in Cwmgors near to Swansea.

The recce Tuesday and Wednesday went well - day 1 was very tight.  We had about 12 minutes to spare before they closed the stage - something for the organizers to consider for next year.  The stages are slippery than 2006, and already quite rutted from the barrage of EVO recce cars.  We will raise the car from 2006 to suit.

Thursday was spent checking out of one hotel into another (booked by the big teams since March!), scrutineerting, securing the tyres and preparing the service area.  Scrutineering was passed with no problems except for a sticker on the front that was where the lamp pod is.  Luckily, the organizers were kind enough to make up a replacement and we duly relocated it to the satisfaction of the scrutineers.  C.A.M. Sport did a hell of a job and we now have a hospitality tent and a main tent fulling kitted out with lighting, outlets, and the most important, a gas stove and kettle for coffee!

So, then it was off to Cardiff to the ceremonial start.  We heard the familiar voice of Robin Bradford giving commentry, and we had our 1 minute of spotlight cheered on by Alecia (Jonathan's wife) and Dominic (Adrian's son) before returning back to Swansea.

So now its off the the forests.  We set of at about 11:20am for Port Talbot, SS1.  We will try to post progress - if not, you can check out the numerous WRC web sites for stage times...
 

...And The Drama!

After a good English breakfast at Sainsbury, we set off in convoy with the recce car and the OPC, each carrying as much stuff as we could cram in, heading for Dai - our service crew chief. On arrival we unpacked, and while Dai set about switching the road tyres on the recce car for gravel tyres, Jonathan and I put the OPC on the hoist to deal with a few issues - namely the fitting of the tank guard, raising the front ride height and adding an extension to the sump guard to protect the outer edges of the radiator.

Two glaring problems jumped out. First, the gravel tyres we had picked up yesterday were part worn 15" tyres, but no matter how worn they were, they would never fit the 14" rims of the recce car! Second, and potentially more serious was the oil that was coating the front left strut. Yes, it was leaking. A quick call to AVO produced an answer that changed the day's program dramatically. They had a good idea what was wrong, and they could fix it. They did not have a spare one available, and could not build one before the rally. Therefore, the only option was to leave Dai with a few hurried outlines of what we needed to do on the car, and we set off for Northampton, some 260 odd miles away. Fortunately it was early enough in the day to be a realistic trek, and we got there a little shy of 4 hours later - around 3pm. Whilst we got a bite to eat, the strut was rebuilt and tested. So, back to Wales again. We called Dai en route to let him know we had got the strut sorted to hear that not only had he completed all the bits on the car, he had also managed to borrow four 15" rims to fit the recce car and had already mounted the gravel tyres on them. Hats off that man!!!

We refitted the strut on arrival at Dai, put on the recce tyres/rims and made revised plans for the setup of the service area. It turned out to have been an interesting but useful day by all standards. Tomorrow, day 1 of the recce.
 

For photos of the final preparation of the OPC, click here.
 

The car was duly picked up after some head scratching about the math of pulling the OPC with another Astra.  In the end, the math was right, and after negotiating snowy road up and down steep inclines it was onto the 10 hour trip back.

The car is back in Blickstedt, home of Kickastra Codriver, for 4 days of hard work to get the last minute things done. 

Tobias Scharf had a very interesting and probably unique car in ralying worldwide - a group N4 FWD Petrol Astra - thats right - group N4.  The new Opel/Vauxhall Astra OPC has a 2.0L Turbo engine.  Tobia Scharf managed to convince Opel to homologate it with the FIA, and after working on the 32mm restrictor and a modified dog box from the Diesel Opel Astra GTC.  This is probably one of, if not the only, turbo petrol FWD group N4 cars.  Tobias says that the development and engine is not on par with the Subaru Impreza or Mitsubishi Evolutions, since the OPC is really a production performance car instead of a road-going rally car, but it can achieve top 5 group N times in the right hands in the right conditions. 

For photos of the trip and the interesting Opel Astra OPC Turbo car, click here.

Firstly, on the way to Autodienst Scharf to have the dog box installed, the water pump failed (probably damaged from the overheating on WRGB06) which broke the timing belt and bent some valves, requiring all valves to be changed.

Then, last week Friday (9 November) when the dog box was finally fitted and the car was test driven, the interior heater decided to become a water fountain, dumping water into the car.  Tobias Scharf, Opel Astra Guru Extraordinaire, is on the case and the car should be ready in the coming week.

That leaves less than a week for the final preparations at the Kickastra home in Blickstedt, Germany for lamp pod check, suspension installation, impact wrench install, and a long list of other last minute items.  As not much more can possibly happen, we should be good to go and in the UK on Friday 23 November with an untested but potentially potent Kickastra OPC.  The specs of the maked over Kickatra OPC are available here.
 

Click here for Photos...