The Team In Action At Caerwent

Stages: 8– Starters: 100– Finishers: 65

Mark II Motorsport travelled west again last weekend to take part in the penultimate round of the BTRDA National Clubman’s Asphalt Championship. As budget constraints meant this was to be the final round the team would compete in, the strategy was simple – beat the 2 main rivals, Gary Le Coadou in the GpA Toyota Celica and Chris Jones in his Subaru powered Focus, and the title would go to Mark II!

The venue for this latest round was the army training camp at Caerwent, near Newport. With a huge network of narrow roads, many with substantial concrete kerbs, local knowledge and tidy driving would be an advantage. Caerwent is known to be very hard on machinery with high retirement levels a feature.

Driver Mark Welch was again being co – driven by Andy Wynn. “We’ve never been to this tricky venue before” said Wynn, “the navigating will be from maps as pace notes are not allowed and I’ll be very busy as each of the 8 stages is about 9 miles with around 100 corners per stage!”

Unusually, the weather was very dry and sunny for the rally. Event favourite Peter Lloyd led the field away at car 1, but an engine fire halted his Subaru WRC S9 on the very first stage. Fortunately the fire was extinguished before too much damage was done. Mark II was seeded at 9, behind Le Coadou who was at 7 and ahead of Jones seeded 10.

Welch drove fairly conservatively on SS1, “exploring” the venue. Despite low grip levels, the team were very pleased to record 3rd fastest time. Fortunately this was 6 seconds ahead of Le Coadou, unfortunately 8 seconds adrift of Jones who had found some speed, notching up the fastest time ahead of car 2, Kev Carr in his very rapid Escort.

SS2 saw the first drama of the day for Mark II – “we had almost caught the car that started 30 seconds in front of us”, said Welch, “then I went way too quickly into almost the final bend of the stage, overshooting the corner and coming to a complete halt”. Well at least he was trying…………..but the over exuberance cost around 10 seconds. The good news was that the lead over Le Coadou was extended by a further 19 seconds but Jones was away, taking another fastest time.

Carr retired at the end of SS2 due to a broken gearbox, elevating Welch and Wynn into 2nd place. Then more drama on SS3. The teams Escort Cosworth has a system built in 2 reduce the effect of turbo lag, imaginatively known as “anti lag” or ALS. This system has 2 settings, basically a soft setting for wet conditions and an aggressive setting for the dry. It’s invaluable if the venue is tight and twisty as is Caerwent. After 3 corners of SS3, Welch notice that the ALS was causing the throttle to stay wide open, “so we switched it off quickly”!

However the obvious disadvantage then showed on the timesheets as the team started to lose ground, coming under pressure from the slow starting Husband and Wife team of Steve and Yvonne Furzeland in a Subaru WRC, and another rapid Impreza driven by James Harvey.

As soon as this became apparent, Welch decided to switch the ALS back on for SS4 with almost disastrous consequences as Wynn explained. “We arrived at the end of a long 6th gear straight; Mark braked for the square left corner at the end. However, the throttle hung open and we had no option but to overshoot the corner, go through the tape and turn round”. So another 20 seconds went begging. Worst still, the car had picked up a bad vibration through the transmission.

Once in service, the car was jacked up and the service crew of Bruce, Julian and Dan set about investigating what the problem with the transmission could be. After a few minutes, Bruce found the fault, a broken flexible joint in the propshaft. With the clock ticking, the team, now aided by Denis Osborne who had appeared in the nick of time, set about fixing the Cosworth.

Despite the spare joint not being a perfect fit, the car was repaired after an amazing team effort and the Welch Wynn duo made it to the start of SS5 with seconds to spare. As soon as the car left the line, yet another problem reared its head – no intercom! Hand signals from the left hand seat took over and the team got to the end of the stage without incident.

By this time Mark II had slipped down the order to 6th and 2nd in class. Hopes of wrapping up the Championship were fading but in order to guarantee 2nd, the team still had to get across the line. Unfortunately, Le Coadou was now out of the running having retired with gearbox failure, underlining just how tough the event was turning out to be.

With the intercom now fixed, the dynamic duo set about the final 3 stages. SS6 went fairly well but a route change on SS7 witnessed the third overshoot of the day and this time the loss was 30 seconds. “We went straight on at a square right and ended up with no place to turn round” said Welch, “in fact we waited for the Focus of Jones to go by before rejoining the stage”.

By the end of SS8, Mark II were back in 5th, 2nd in class and relieved to finish. Jones drove very well and took the win from Furzeland by a single second. In championship terms, Welch and Jones are now tied at the head of the Championship, but with a round to go which is not in the teams program, it seems that in 2008 they’ll be runners up with plenty of incentive to go one better in 2009!!

Mark II Motorsport Would Like To Thank Their Sponsors :-

Posted 6th October 2008