Rallying.

It didn't start well. First time out in the Mark 1 Escort was at Goodwood in February. The car was finished the night before and wasn't even dressed. Not even time for a test drive. With the amount of castor they'd dialled in, the steering was unbelievably heavy and the car was almost undriveable. The kick-back through the steering was so bad that we finished the day with a second in class (out of three!) and a broken wrist.

That meant that, when it was time for the Rally of Kent, I was still wearing a plaster cast but we have a very slow, although very strong (thank goodness), Focus with power steering for the forests. Things were going quite well until a tree leapt onto the track in front of us on stage six. Trees are remarkably unyielding, so the car looked very sorry for itself, as did they co-driver, who's doen nothing for the rest of the year but complain about a cracked rib and a broken finger! I told him: "If you're going to moan, you shouldn't have joined. You volunteered to sit there." He felt that I could have been a little more sympathetic, especially as I got away without injury, probably thanks to the fact that I was already in plaster!

The Patriot Rally in Caerwent, Wales, later in the year seemed to be going quite well. The car was starting to feel sorted and to handle until, after 50 stage miles, we just slid slowly into the kerb and snapped the TCA. We got some great pictures of the car airborne and we're planning a return visit with an ambition to see what the other thirty miles that we missed are like.

In between times, we fitted in the Monteborg Rally, near Ypres in Belgium. It's more of a RallySprint really on super greasy, very narrow, closed roads. Great fun and we managed to finish that one without falling off. Well, to be quite truthful, we did slide into what they a dyke on the practice run but no damage and no harm done. Even our pride was salvaged by the two other cars that slid into the dyke at the same point later in the day!

The plan for 2007 is more of the same but fewer of the mishaps. I will have to ask the tree to be more careful.

Sprinting.

Only three outings in the 6R4 in 2006. A fairly pedestrian Longcross, where I couldn't really get on the pace of the motor-bike engined Caterhams, in spite of coming within a few tenths of the previous lap record. Those things are so light that with a similar power-to-weight ratio they can leave the Metro for dead under braking and changing direction. I'll either have to get some weight out of the car, get more power or go on a diet. Probably all three.

The other outings were at North Weald with an FTD, and the Brighton Speed Trials, where we came about eighth overall and missed the top six shoot-out by twenty-six hundreths of a second. New, longer first and second gears are the demon plan to make up that deficit next year, plus any of the three mods outlined above.

As the Esso ad used to say: "Happy Motoring."