Overall results of the MRA rally which covered 200km’s comprising of nine stages over the weekend:
1st Dinesh Jayawardane (Civic SIR)
2nd Rizvi Farook (Civic SIR)
3rd Riyaz Farook (Mitsubishi Evo)
4th Sajad Zuhair (Civic EX)
Dinesh J, Rizvi & Sajad drove exceptionally well pushing their machines to the limits.
See the problem with all things new is, it's hard unless someone takes the time out to explain what needs to be done, so when I was asked whether I would like to be the co-driver for the Rally I said yes (pls note co-driver is essentially navigator) little realizing how stressful that can be!!
The first stage is the "Recky" run, this is where the drivers get a hang of the road and get to tell the navigators which corners they need call-outs, which area's they need cautions for. The car I was in was fully race prepared with the exception of tyres, the Tarmac tyres did not give that much of a grip as the surface was mostly gravel. We also had the fog lights for better vision on the night..
On my side of the dash, the meters were mounted showing the reading. All I had to do was simply zero the meter at start during the recky run and noted down the distance at which each call out needed to be made, simple right? not quite. After the first Ricky run A-B 15.3 KMS and back the same route B-A I thought I had it all covered. Confident I was upto the task I could not wait to start the night stages. Sajad who drove the machine clearly told me the call outs he needed and the abrevs.
As night arrived, I must say my knees were a bit shakey, the course itself was very narrow and the roads were full of sharp corners. To top it all there was sand here and there that made the driving even more dangerous which also meant I can not afford to get any of the call-outs wrong. 5-4-3-2-1 -Off we went for the first night Recky, MR (medium right) I called out at the top of my voice at 4mts into the run, there was no medium right..1600 mts into the Recky I called out slow left, again there was no Slow left. Now I was nervous and confidnece shattered! Sajad - Stopped the car, pulled the sheets from me and pointed at the top of the paper. I had been reading the pace notes from "B- A" damn it!!! You'd think it would end there, not quite, we also found out that since the meter readings were done where the the call-outs were it meant I was really not helping things, what I should have done is marked the pace notes so I can call out before approaching the "hazard" meaning the reading needed to be advanced. That figured the rest was relatively easy. Of course my addiction to WRC or PS2 proved to be a liability as half the time I had to struggle to not call the "slow left" as "short left". That was confusing the shit out of the driver and I am sure one more time and he would have somehow ejected me off the seat!!
Anyway that proved to be a an excellent learning and I guess that is why they have these Recky runs! Everytime we raced afterwards I checked a 110% whether I was looking at the correct pace notes ;-)) The first race stage was on Saturday morning and I must say we did fantastically, we were placed third overall and 1st on our class. The man at the wheel pushed and pushed and we were all over the place but I felt confident he could handle it. B-A stage 2 was a different strory, this gave me signs of what was to come. Appoaching a Medium left we came in too fast and did a 360 degree turn went sliding into the concrete signposts and as luck would have it, corrected and stopped dead straight facing the road. Scared? I honestly did not have time, I just looked at the next call out since Sajad had taken off already! He eased off a bit since that could have been fatal, I was asked to call this out on the next runs as we did not have it on the pace notes. We finished the next stage for the day also in good time and were happy with the overall performance.
The night stages - however proved to be a different ball game altogether, by now we had gained 22 seconds on the closest EVO competing for third place overall! The first A-B run was uneventful and everyone drove rather cautiously since there was a drizzle and the route was a death trap at night. B-A we threw caution to the wind on the straight, we realized unlike the others our pace notes did not carry a heads-up when approaching the few straights. Thereby loosing some relatively easy seconds. Pushing hard on one of the straights I remember calling out for a "Slow left", the pilot of course was flying low and managed to slow down in time but the roads were wet (it had been pouring!!) we jus slid off the road and onto a ditch..We lost a good two minutes there and that easily cost us third place overall. Although we won our class, it would have been better to place along with the high powered B16A honda's.
Apart from us Dinesh J and Rizvi were battling it out for 1st and 2nd in the Honda SIR's. Positions were swapped on various stages making way for an exiciting last lap. In the end Dinesh managed to win with a close 28 seond lead overall. Rallies are super fun and super stressful, especially the night stages and I guess especially in a place like Sri Lanka.
I recall one stretch we were hammering away and a sickly looking dog was just standing in the middle of the road, inspite of all the racket we created with the straight thru exhaust and the works the bugger refused to budge. Sajad steered just in time to avoid the lil bugger, maybe he was suicidal??
lol