We had a good but slightly hurried recce, making fresh note for all the stages. The lack of chicanes being used on the stages made the making of the pace notes even more critical to get right.

On the way to the first stage, at Port Erin, turning left out of a side road onto the main road and up a hill the clutch bite position changed and it became apparent that the clutch, although new for the IRC Scotland last year (2 events ago), was not going to last and indeed would not handle starts using the anti-lag. The nights stages were then spent making the car last, and getting through. Thankfully we made it and were then able to use the facilities of Ian Tunney’s, PACE motorsports garage, at unions mills, and the skills of, Mick and John (Minisport) Jim (Pace) and the jokes of Dan (Minisport), to effect a clutch change eventually getting back to the hotel at 2.00am.

The text relaying start time, found us way down in 38th position from a seeded start of 20th, but with the new clutch along with good weather and the prospect of a day of fantastic stages on the island, our hopes were high. We pushed hard all day and gradually crept up the results table, during the day we realised, although that we were slightly too stiff on suspension settings and alterations of the dampers found some gains in overall grip.

We found ourselves at the end of the event, back up to 23rd O/A and picking up a trophy for 2nd in Group N behind Jonny Greer in his similar Evo 9, another bonus form a challenging weekend was that we completed the rally with the car in one piece!