The Rally

Rally Muscelului takes place in the hills around Campulung Muscel. The Rally has 12 Special Stages (SS), two of them are driven in the night.

Overall the SS are a mixture between very fast passages on gravel and sand and some very narrow mountain stages with a lot of stones, partially also with a lot of mud.

1st day of the Rally: Friday, 25th August 2006

Conditions:
Sky - partially sunny, partially cloudy and a bit of rain
Track – dry, the forest paths humid and muddy

The 1st day of the rally had four Special Stages (SS), “Strimtu” and “Bughita” which were driven twice. The 1st round was driven in the afternoon, the 2nd round started after 22.00h in the night. Exactly at the start of the rally the rain started; not very heavy but enough that the track became slippery.

Directly after the start, being still in the city on the way to the first SS we suddenly had a terrible noise from the back when entering a curve; we were not sure at that moment but unfortunately it seemed to be the rear differential – this could mean for us, first time in this season, early termination of the rally! We decided to try whatever is possible and went to the start of SS 1.

When we arrived at the start of SS 1 all the cars were still there and waiting – the little village at the border of Campulung was blocked with rally cars - because the cows of the village came back home…. and blocked the start of the SS under a quite narrow railway bridge. We started with more than one hour delay; unfortunately one team had an accident on the SS and the ambulance had to enter the track and the organizers decided to cancel this SS, not to have even more delays.

The 2nd SS, “Bughita”, starts with a fast uphill section and goes on through the forest with light and medium curves, many of them with a lot of mud and so quite slippery. Most of the curves can be driven quite fast, so we had to be very attentive how slippery it really is; our damaged rear differential made it even harder to keep the car under control and on the track.

In the night session we had our full concentration on SS 1 which we were driving now 1st time in “race” speed. The track has some difficult passages uphill, with deep sandy ruts; one Ford K remained stuck in a narrow curve and we lost several seconds to realize that nothing serious happened and we could move on. The downhill part are incredible narrow needle curves, one after the other, all of them full of loose sand and stones, and it is a quite tough exercise to get the car down fast and to keep it at the same time on the track.

In the 2nd SS in the night, we tried to remember the muddy parts and some holes which we had not noted in our road book because they arose from the rain earlier in the afternoon – we managed well.

We finished day one on Place 5 in our group and were hoping that the rear differential will not break completely and we will be able to finish the rally.

2nd day of the Rally: Saturday, 26th August 2006

Conditions:
Sky – mixed, sunny and cloudy and partially rain
Surface of the track: humid in the valleys, wet and muddy in the forest

The 2nd day started with four long SS, “Bratia” and “Nucsoara” which were driven both also back.

The first part of Bratia 1 is the fastest session of the rally; alongside a river through the meadows, more or less straight with some spectacular jumps. The 2nd part goes uphill through the forest; because it rained in the night the track was muddy and slippery. The forest is a wood exploration area and we had to pay a lot of attention not to hit the big wood logs alongside the track.

Due to the damaged rear differential our car was quite unstable in the back and it was difficult to keep it straight on the long fast tracks as well as in the curves where it slided a lot. In one left curve we hit while sliding with the right backside a stone, but luckily only the rear bumper was a bit damaged.

The 2nd SS Nucsoara goes alongside a river, partially through forest. It is maybe the nicest SS of the rally with a good mixture between fast passages followed by combinations of light, medium and sharp curves. While finishing this SS we had a strange noise in the back of our Evo and discovered after the SS that the shock absorber right back was not fixed anymore and we had real good luck not to enter into a spectacular “breakdown” during the SS. Before starting the two SS back, we had a service break and could fix it.

After the four SS we remained on place 5 in our group and were hoping to finish in the points.

After a service stop in Campulung, the two SS from the day before were driven again and, followed by another service stop, a 4th time.

In the first round we beated our Friday’s time, although the track got quite worth due to the many cars passing and the ruts were that deep that even our Evo was “fighting”. In the last SS, Guenter Graef had to give up due to technical problems, being on place 2 at that moment. We gained one position and finished the rally on place 4 in our group (15th position overall).

Resume
It was the first time we had to face technical problems which we could not solve or repair during the rally and we had to drive a “tactical” rally and to try to finish and gain points for the championship. Luckily we could finish and gained additional 5 points.

In the Group H Championship we are with 33 points still leading the championship on Place 1!

BRK Rally Team