Syd Stelvio – Pearl of India - Day 16 – Hyderabad to Hampi – 412km
Dear reader, it feels like an age since last I wrote. Since then, so much has happened, and yet so little, too. We are now at the end of day 16 of our adventure, and almost on the home stretch. Hampi is out most southerly point, the drive south has been brisk and tomorrow we gun it for the west coast once again.
The previous day was a rest day, and the day before that a long 541km transit day along the highway between Nagpur and Hyderabad. There is little to report on such a run, there is no competition, just a few passage controls to ensure everyone is on the right track and all that matters is getting safely to the destination, which everyone managed.
Yesterday’s day off the road meant a day on the tools, with thousands of kilometers covered now the cars are feeling it, and so are their occupants. The shouty white Ford of the clan Buchan had needed a new throttle cable on the transit day, not a bad day to snap one, and then the brakes needed bleeding too. Whilst conducting this reasonably straight forward operation there was some confusion as to why no fluid was being expelled upon the brake pedal being depressed, a conundrum for sure, but one that was explained by user error – with the accelerator being pushed down instead of the brake. This may explain the snapped throttle cable, after all if Andy is pressing that expecting the car to stop, he’ll no doubt be stamping on it pretty hard when the opposite happens!
Lessons in the finer art of vehicle operation completed there was time for the sweeps to help other crews, including further work on car 10, who are still struggling with over-heating. It seems that this will be a fact of life for them for the remainder of the event, and sure enough with the mercury hitting 37 degrees on day 16, they were struggling again. But Peter and Debbie don’t give in, and whilst their story from this rally won’t be of an overall victory, they have forged their own story and earned the respect of everyone.
Back on the road with us and competing today was another blue Mercedes, crewed by Nick Brayshaw and Vikki Lang. They’ve been tagging along with the rally in the crew cars whilst a spare sump has been sourced for the car, and finally today we could enjoy their presence on the regs again.
As well as being the hottest day of the rally, it was also another long one, with the start time being bought forward an hour to ensure that all crews had the best chance of completing the 412km run before dark. At times the day resembled another transit run, especially early on with a run out on the highway, before cutting across country for the first regularity. But not before passing a passage control on the Jurala Dam, where, as luck would have it, an ice cream van was situated with an ice cream for everyone bought by Clerk of the Course Guy Woodcock. It was a lovely gesture, but the vendor himself was covered in the dust that must have been expelled when Guy produced his wallet, and for a minute the poor chap must have felt like it was a repeat of Pompeii. Still, it didn’t affect the taste of the merchandise, that was much appreciated in today’s temperatures.
The regularity was only a few kilometers from the PC, but sadly the roads were so busy it had to be scrubbed, and so a 50km run into the midpoint time control followed, on a mixture of rough and reasonable roads, and then a busy run through the town of Raichur. The temperature gauges were going through the roof, and I don’t need to tell you that car 10 was forced to pull over, waving their ok board above the crowd of interested people that gathered around to check out the beautiful Mercedes.
There was a decent amount of time at the control for the cars to cool down, though this wasn’t exactly an expedient process in the temperatures. There were still 200 clicks or so to go, with the days final and now only regularity almost at the very end of the day, just outside Hampi. The landscape began to change dramatically as the afternoon wore on, with paddy fields appearing, that would eventually spread as far as the eye could see, flanked by palm trees and occasionally other crops as well. The vivid green of the crops was supercharged by the hot and high sun, but by the time the reg came around the great orange ball was beginning to sink a little.
The regularity itself was a tricky affair, there were speed bumps in a lot of places, and a tricky slot left after a bridge as well as other road users causing hold ups. With the cancellation of the first regularity, there were now marshals deployed at four timing points across the 12k reg, the most seen on the rally, offering plenty of opportunities to add to the debt with the stopwatch.
The results were a story of two halves, people either did well, or, for various reasons, did not. When the scores came in, no positions had changed on the leaderboard, but there is no daylight for the top three of Martin and Olivia Hunt, Jim Grayson and Simon Spinks and Richard Clark and Jonathan Round. All three did well, but the cars in fourth and fifth spot, the Ford and Chevy Coupes of the Buchans and Tommy Dreelan and George Barrack did not, shipping 40 and 39 seconds each. The podium is now surely out of reach for them, with just three days of driving remaining.
Three days can be a long time in this sport though, and both Coupe crews were out fettling their cars this evening, when others were not, they’ve not given it up yet and with a run through the Ghats tomorrow, before we reach the coast, things could easily shift again.
Syd
