What can I say? How much fun is a 6R4?!! We may have retired on stage 5 but until then it was fantastic being back in a proper ex-Group B rally car. Certainly it was a little disappointing to retire but the positives certainly outweight the negatives. Despite an issue with understeer the handling was still impressive, the power was as impressive as ever although we did bog down coming out of corners more than expected. The 330mm brakes were truly fantastic at stopping the car, braking distances were getting shorter and shorter as Adrian got used to them.
We could probably have trailed round at very slow speed instead of retiring (broken bottom arm) but we opted for the safer option of parking up. There was no point in risking extra damage on what was an extended test session.
Having got the car back to the workshop the team have found that not only was the diff fully loaded (perfect for understeer on tight, twisty and loose stages!!) we were also using the incorrect stepoff gear, it was the road car ratio which is good for top speed but far from great for acceleration.....
The only really disappointing part of the event was how ineffective the intercom was a dealing with the noise of a 2.5 6R4 engine. On the face of it my old Peltor coped far better which is a great disappointment as I sold it many months ago! Oh well.....
Plans are underway for the next event, which can't arrive quick enough if you ask me!
