Solo Race - Umm al Quwain

With the fan re-wired and some other issues attended to, this weekend's adventure was a Friday afternoon jaunt to UAQ.  The Motorplex had organised another Solo Race around their 10km offroad track, but due to a delayed start, we only managed two runs before darkness descended.

My first run gave me a time of 9min 28sec, knocking 19secs off my previous best - which was good enough to win last time out.  But on the second run disaster struck.  Halfway round I could feel something wasn't right on the passenger side front wheel.  And shortly before the finish it let go completely, leaving me to finish the run in an unimpressive 11minutes-plus, on three tyres and a rim.

However that proved to be enough for 3rd place and a trophy - the winner didn't come close to my time on the first run, so at least I can claim 'fastest lap' in the 4x4 class.

Big thanks to Richard Bailey, who provided a first-class pit-stop service for the event!

Mark Powell entered his newly-re-acquired Fast and Speed Buggy, and sadly blew the 4L Nissan V6 engine on the first run.

There are still a couple of issues to be resolved with the Beast, the main one appearing to be fuel related.  It feels like we are running out of steam around 4500-5000rpm, but without any misfire, so I suspect a fuel pump/fuel filter problem.

Good news is that they will shortly announce a championship schedule for the 2013 season, to include 4 Solo Races and one rally!  So finally, we can get some local racing.  And that's a Good Thing.

Dubai International Rally

I'd already volunteered (again) to run as '00' car for this event, planning to run it in the road car as in previous years.  But with the Beast newly tuned, I decided this would be an ideal shakedown opportunity for it.  Ian Simpson had already been press-ganged into co-driving, as Sheila was Stage Commander.

The DIR is the final round of the Middle East Rally Championship, which is a saloon car event, so the tracks are firm and fast.  But first we have to get to the start of the first stage, a 70-odd km trek from Rally HQ at Dubai Mens College.  Halfway there I felt the steering tighten up, and immediately checked the engine temperature and the ignition lamp - both OK.  So that means it's not a serpentine belt failure.  A quick look under the hood confirmed that we'd lost our power steering fluid - someone hadn't tightened the union on the pump.  With a strict schedule to keep, I couldn't spare the time to hunt for ATF, so I just refitted the union and we ran the first three stages without power steering.

At the end of the 6th stage we were headed back to DMC when the heavens opened.  The rain was the worst I've ever experienced, and I was happy to get back safely to Dubai.

Day two dawned bright and clear, but Stage 7 was littered with deep puddles and deeper lakes.  We had no problems with that, but Mark and John got drenched in their open Buggy as '0' car!  But our day came to an end as we staretd Stage 10 - suddenly we had no cooling.  An electrical problem meant that neither fan was running, and although I managed to jury-rig a supply to one to get us home, we had to bail out of the stage.

But overall, the Beast performed well, the engine ran faultlessly and we have a couple of issues to fix before it goes out again - which will be this Friday (14th December).  A 'Solo Race' is being held up at Umm Al Quwain Motorplex, so I'll be up there to try and get another win in the 4x4 class!

The Day of the Dyno

There is some debate about the desirability of a thermostat in a race car engine. Some say that it restricts flow and that it is a bad thing, others say that without it, the engine will be slow to reach its ideal running temperature. Often they are removed in the hope of reducing engine temperatures that are close to the limit, rather than addressing the underlying problem.

I can now state quite categorically that thermostats are a Good Thing. When Mark Adams found that, contrary to my recent experience, the Beast was running hot at a fast tickover, he started investigating. And he discovered that we had no thermostat. However, in the LS2 engine, the thermostat and ‘stat housing design is such that without one, around 50% of the water flow from the pump will be immediately short-circuited back to the pump infeed, without going anywhere near the radiator! This is clearly a Bad Thing, and one more legacy of the original (rather questionable) build quality. He also found a blanked off bleed tube, which is there to release any air trapped in the highest point of the water jacket back to the radiator. Without this, hot-spots can develop where the air has displaced the coolant.

A quick trip to the helpful guys at Al Ghandi resulted in a shiny new ‘stat and housing, and after some re-jigging of the coolant pipework by Robbie the Fabricator, normal cooling was restored!

None of the garages where the Beast was serviced had noticed these problems. We’ve gone down the road of solving overheating through bigger and better radiators and fans, without understanding the fundamental problems. With these addressed, we can now put the Beast under the stress of a dyno run, which has been delayed accordingly. So before we even get to the tuning, Mark has earned my gratitude.

So finally, we get the Beast on the 4x4 dynamometer at 1000 Dunes Garage, where Sam has built his reputation on tuning Evos. As suspected, Mark finds issues with the mixture as well as the timing, which are addressed as the mapping is progressively refined over the course of some ten dyno runs. The final result (with restrictor) is a maximum 213 bhp at the wheels, coming at around 4700rpm, and a peak torque of 277 ft/lbs with a very flat torque-curve. The mandatory FIA restrictor (37.2mm) is costing us around 15 bhp, but the torque is actually slightly increased – go figure. All figures show an improvement over the original mapping, but more importantly the re-map should provide increased engine reliability and durability.

It lives! It breathes!

Now things are really starting to happen (and not before time, you might say).

Lerric (?sp) is the latest addition to Saluki Motorsport, and has taken The Beast under his wing. The engine is back in, but only after some elegant welding by Robbie to repair one exhaust manifold which was damaged by touching the engine mounting, which in turn was knackered (probably) by the rubbery bit getting too hot from the manifold. If that makes sense.

Anyway the mounting is now replaced, the manifolds are re-lagged and the engine has been fired up. So all we need now is for Mark Adams to come and breathe on it.

And guess what? He turned up yesterday! Perfect timing, although unfortunately the UAE's entire stock of LR Defenders is also in the queue for his attention, these being Mark's bread and butter. But when he's ready for the main course, we'll be heading off to 1000 Dunes Garage to use their dyno, so that Mark can sort out the errant mapping.

Stay tuned (no pun intended) for the next thrilling instalment!

The Great Round Tuit Shortage of 2012

You may well be forgiven for thinking that my inactivity in the blogosphere was indicative of inactivity on the vehicular front. And, dear reader, you would not be far wrong.


Immediately post-DC, (April) the dead Beast was dumped outside Saluki Motorsports with the promise that they’d have a look at the engine when they got a Round Tuit. Apparently, Round Tuits have been in short supply lately, and Saluki didn’t get one till the end of July. Having taken the engine apart, it was immediately clear that this was indeed an ex-engine. It had well and truly expired, shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet its maker.

According to Rick at Saluki (not Rick Carless, you understand) the engine had overheated. This was rather surprising as the water temperature had not been excessive. There was no evidence of lubrication failure, but one aluminium piston skirt had melted, releasing the gudgeon pin and wreaking comprehensive mayhem in the bowels of the motor. The piston tops had survived, being forged, but the unforged skirt gave way. This, Rick says, is exactly the same failure they had with the Honda V6 engine in the old Saluki buggy, which was finally traced to an overly-lean fuel/air mixture, and rectified by having the engine professionally re-mapped on the dyno.

So the plan was, buy a new short block (the cylinder heads being undamaged), nail it in, and get Mark Addams (the ECU-wizard) to come and do the mapping. So I sent a huge chunk of wonga in the direction of my mate Kolby at Turnkey Engines in sunny California, and waited for a large box to arrive.

At this point two things went wrong. First, the Man from the Municipality threatened to tow away the Beast, because it had been parked outside Saluki Motorsport for nearly 5 months by this time, and was apparently responsible for despoiling the view of Al Quoz Industrial Area. Now, Al Quoz has never won any major plaudits as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it is my contention that having a few race cars lying around actually improves the landscape. But you know what these bureaucrats are like. So I had the hot and sweaty task of loading the dead Beast onto the trailer (in the middle of summer) to drag it back to the office, about which I was less than pleased. Second, I gave TNT the simple task of picking up the engine and delivering to Dubai, a task which should have taken any self-respecting airfreight forwarder a few days. TNT were either another victim of the great Round Tuit shortage, or they have the world’s slowest aircraft, because it took them a full month to get it here. ‘Yes, we can!’ boasts their tag-line these days. Actually, no, they can’t.

It arrived yesterday, and hopefully, it can be fitted next week – but not by Rick, because he’s now left Saluki! And then, we just have to persuade Mr Addams to grace us with his presence and all will be well……inshallah.

As far as the new season is concerned – the only info I have is a tentative schedule for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which is 5th-12th April 2013.

And that, dear reader, concludes this Summer Omnibus Edition and brings you up to date with the doings of Newtrix Racing. Watch this space for the next nail-biting episode!

Back in the old routine

For three days we were doing arguably what we do best – being part of the sweep team. Day 2 saw us attending to the dehydrated Mr Gadasin and then (sort-of) escorting him out, and then towing out one of the GoKobra team on his quad. In between, we were entertained by Streaky getting the ‘Queen Mary’ (a.k.a. Sk Hamad’s massive F350 pick-up) repeatedly stuck trying to escape from a deep bowl.

By the start of Day 3, we'd acquired a VHF radio, a FRS handset, a set of stickers and a sweep team T-shirt - so it was official. We swept from the start near Tharwaniya as far as Moreeb, before being pulled out to sweep from the restart (Hameem) onwards. The last car out was Emil Kneisser’s, which had lost 4WD and promptly got stuck in a bowl. After his support crew had finally extricated him, he set off in an ultimately futile bid to complete the stage, before pulling out at the pipeline crossing. Having cooked his engine, I towed him out to the road.

Day 4 started off the MZ road, and the first customer was our friend Jurgen in the GoKobra 243. He’d managed to achieve an impressive 720 degree roll, ending up on his wheels, the only damage being a loose mudguard! Soon we were helping Tommy Castellazzi to refill the radiator of his diesel Landie, which had blown a top hose. To his credit, he made it across to the Ghayathi road before calling it a day. I then got stuck on a piece of innocuous looking flat sand, and whilst reversing onto the sand-ladders ripped off the back box of my exhaust. After that it was just a matter of fighting our way across the soft dunes to the road, arriving just in time to stop the fuel bowser from leaving PC2. We fueled up and headed for PC4 at Arada, and after the last car went through we started our final sweep. About 2km into it, Nigel managed to drop his Patrol into The Bowl from Hell and lose a tyre.

We couldn’t even get to the axle to jack it up, so we tried to double-winch it out. My winch overheated, then his winch popped a fuse and left his electrics dead. Bugger. After a bit of re-wiring he managed to get the engine going, so we used the sand ladders to reverse it a bit, to try and get a jack under it. But a sand ladder had ended up buried precisely where we needed to put the jacking board. Bugger. Finally dug the sand ladder out, and jacked it up. However, the car was still at a lousy angle and fell off the jack. Bugger. Put in another jack, try again – not great but this time we managed to get the spare wheel under the chassis for insurance. Dug under the tyre, reseated it on the bead, connected up the compressor – and then found that the valve had ripped off. Bugger. Find spare valve, push it in from the inside, pull it through – and the car falls off the jack again. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Jack it up again, finally get some air in it, and it pops back onto the bead. Hurrah. More sand-ladder activity and eventually he’s reversing back up the slope. After three attempts he makes it out, by which time we’d spent 4 hours there and it was dark, and control had ordered a helicopter ‘virtual sweep’ to save us having to continue.
It’s a long, long drive round the crescent from Arada to Hameem, where much-needed beer and dinner awaited us.

No news is blog news...

I can only assume that the Liwa Four are either incredibly busy, incredibly stuck, or incredibly asleep, because to date I’ve not had an update on today’s events. However this does at least give me a chance to deal with some of the Newtrix fan mail which has been piling up lately, so here goes.

Ms. K Knightley from the UK writes: "You were wonderful Phantom, a real “Spirit in the Night”. Call me. Anytime."

Whilst Scarlett J writes from New York: “If the pen is mightier than the sword P.B., come on over and teach me how to spell”

Well that’s quite enough of that, Thank you ladies. What, you thought the fan mail was for Ian?

Now obviously since my true name is a closely guarded secret, known only to a couple of hundred people, my wife Carole and cat Mia, there has been a degree of confusion in the press about my real identity. So here’s who I’m not;

I’m not a female American singer songwriter who had a hit with “Damn, I wish I was your writer” from the album” Tongues and Tall Tales” That’s Sophie B. Logger

Nor am I the ghost of Three Fingered Jimmy The ‘nuck, a Candian lumberjack who drank himself to death on the trail of a lonesome pine. He’s the phantom logger.

I’m definitely not Oliver North: I think some confusion arose in the past because he was caught trying to sell McDonnell Douglas F4s to the Nicaraguans during the late 80s. And that makes him the Phantom Flogger.

I’m also not a boxer weighing between 115 and 118 pounds (a Bantam Slogger), but should I put my mind, and lips to it, I’m sure I could be the best kisser a small settlement on the A68, 5 miles south of Jedburgh, thus making me “Phantom Blogger, the Camptown Snogger”.

You see – now you’re all desperate for news from the desert :-)

So I can tell you that despite enduring a great many difficulties, Tommy Castellazzi is still hanging in there. Go for it Tommy.

The engine's sooty, so we'll sweep instead.

You were probably thinking that with Ian and Sheila retired from the rally, there would be nothing for a Phantom Blogger to do but put his feet up and enjoy a dram or two of Scotland’s finest fire water. Yes, so was he. But alas, just as I was thinking of cracking open a bottle this evening, Ian rang to tell me about his day, and halfway through the conversation, I realised that the words “update” and “blog” were about to leave his lips. I desperately tried to drop the phone in a convincing manner, but the fact that you’re now reading these words means I clearly didn’t get away with it.

Today's photo, of Ian and Sheila leaving the Start ramp at the Prologue, is brought to you by Bob McCaffrey, motor sports photographer extraordinaire. 1/400 @ f 2.8 Bob. You'll be fine.

With The Liwa Four (Sheila, Ian, Rick & Ian. Pay attention) now enjoying an early summer holiday, they decided to do what any sane person(s) would do when surrounded by sand – i.e. go and play in it, in Ian’s regular road / sand going Nissan Patrol. Their initial foray was merely to PC 1 to watch the first 10 or so cars go by, but they decided that that was as boring as watching 10 cars go by in the desert, so they low ratio and high tailed it across to PC2, where they bumped in Rear Vice Admiral Sir John Mitchell Ross, DSOB @ Bar. John is Commander of the Royal Bathtime fleet, but that has nothing to do with his title of Rear Vice Admiral. You ask him.

JMR is also a legend in his own mind, and a fully signed up member of the Sweep Team - his brush work is amazing. Sheila, Ian, Rick and Ian (you’ll noticed I swapped the two Ians around there just to break things up a bit) offered to join John in his quest for scrap iron a.k.a. abandoned rally vehicles, as a sort of ‘voluntary community sweep car’. It entitles them to the same privileges (i.e. none) but at least they don’t have to damage their car’s paint work with big stickers. So off they jolly well sauntered into the desert, hurling abuse at passing seagulls and galavanting in a manner which only they considered heroic, when they were flagged down by a somewhat concerned co-driver, Dan Schemel, whose driver Boris Gadasin was suffering badly from dehydration.

After the medic who was traveling with JMR took a look at Boris it was decided that he was too ill to continue and a helicopter was called to the scene. However in the very few minutes it took to arrive, the rehydration fluids he’d been drinking and taking by intravenous drip had begun to take effect and he decided he was well enough to drive to the end of the stage. FYI Under such circumstances race crews must actually sign a waiver to say they’ve been advised not to proceed and are doing so voluntarily and at their own risk. Boris did so and though Ian and Sheila (and Ian and Rick) were tasked with keeping up with them to the finish, that’s easier said than done when you’re chasing a rally car. Eventually they gave up the chase and proceeded to the final PC, stopping to help a couple of competitors along the way, then towing one of the same competitors the 15kms back from the final PC to the bivouac after his vehicle suffered gearbox failure practically on the finish line. Which was a ‘lucky’ place to break down I guess.

Much to their surprise, at the Driver’s Briefing later that evening, all round nice chap Mr. Ronan Morgan, who is Clerk of the Course of course, announced that for their sterling efforts today (it’s Euros tomorrow and Yen on Thursday), Ian and Sheila had won the Spirit of the Rally award. The award, four days holiday in Barbados for two people, including all flights and sun tan lotion*, is given each day to those folks adjudged to have embodied the true spirit of the rally. Ian thanked the cheering crowd profusely, and said that after blowing the engine yesterday, he couldn’t have embodied much more spirit last night if he’d tried.

* Actually, it’s two petrol vouchers, but we live in hope.

And thus, folks, you now know how a 15 minute phone call is turned into an hour’s work and 700 words of drivel, simply to keep you entertained for 10 minutes. There's no need to thank me, but if you insist, used notes in small denominations are perfectly acceptable. It's Sterling today and Yen on Thursday. You can keep your Euros merci.

In other news, Tommy’s hanging in there, whilst a few people with a lot more money than Newtrix are still chasing each other around the dunes in some sort of race. Don’t give up Tommy.

A race of attrition

You'll have to excuse my current lack of humour but just a couple of hours into the race, a very short distance before PC2, the engine blew up in Ian and Sheila's car, so their race is over. Some marshals from the PC tried to tow start the car but this resulted in an even bigger bang under the bonnet and something punching its way through the sump. Thus the engine drain was drained of oil, so there is no hope of rebuilding it and Ian and Sheila have been forced to retire from the race.

They have decided to stay down at the bivouac and help out at the race, since a) they've paid for it! b) Rick and Offshore Ian have given up their time to be there this week, c) the (real) dogs are in kennels which is all paid for, and d) as I write, the Al Thika offices are being torn down and rebuilt around me (we have ongoing construction here) so the bivouac is a lot more peaceful ;-)

So it's official. Ian and Sheila are piston broke.

Here's a photo from happier times (yesterday) taken by our old friend Craig McAteer who is visiting from the UK to support Team Saluki. Craig uses Canon cameras like me, but his memory cards all worked yesterday! Thanks Craig for this really great shot.

In other news, Mark Powell, Team Saluki, has blown a gearbox and is retired for the day but will almost certainly restart tomorrow, whilst Dave Mabbs and Xavier Caminada, Team FJ, are having some sort of engine problems in the FJ Cruiser. Their current status is unknown but "it doesn't look good".

UPDATE: Saluki's problem was not a gearbox, it was a blown engine. After 3kms!! And the engine was brand new. Dave Mabbs is definitely out. Other local competitors Mike Zeigler and Mansour Bilhilli are also out with....blown engines. Now I'm not a particularly suspicious person by nature but five local teams, all with blown engines, all within the first half of the first day. Quite a coincidence don't you think? Who knows...


As yet the floods, pestilence, locusts and earthquakes have yet to strike, but it is only Day One........

"Go Go Tommy"

The Prologue

(insert random Frankie Howerd reference here...)
Today has been overcast, and considerably cooler than most of last week. The team decamped from Dubai to Abu Dhabi for Drivers Briefing at Yas, followed by the prologue opposite Marina Mall. Only 30 cars made the start list as result of 6 being stuck on the Jordan/Israel border en route here, and other pre-start retirements. Several vehicles have been relegated to 'national class' after failing scrutineering.

The track was similar to last years, but clockwise (last year's was anticlockwise) and with a water splash near the start and lots of hairpin bends. Some I nailed quite well, but most were pretty scruffy. Not however, as scruffy as the current championship leaders, Messrs Vasilyev and Yevtyekhov, who - as is traditional with the G-Force team - rolled their pickup. As seeded drivers, they will start ahead of us notwithstanding the ignominy of their DNF in the prologue .

We were 14th fastest in 2 mins 11.7 secs, a,nd start 15th at 1043hrs tomorrow. Team Saluki are right behind us and Team FJ start 22nd.

Somewhere in Cyberspace lurks The Phantom Blogger, so this evening I hand over the cyber-baton to this shadowy figure. We, however, have work to do. As Sherlock Holmes would say, 'The game is afoot!'

A lot of balls

Lock up your daughters. For t’is I, the phantomest blogger this side of Phantom Blogsdale. Once again I have cracked the top secret and n’er to be discussed password (“newtrixpassword123”) of their dognesses account, and once again I shall be plumbing new blog depths, in a James Cameron / Mariana Trench sort of way. But obviously without the funding, the back-up, the global interest, 7 miles of garden hose or indeed, the pictures. But more on that later.

The entire NewTrix support team (that’s Rick “I’ll never leave you Carless”, Offshore Ian and I) gathered en masse this afternoon at the windswept, bland, featureless, flat, dull, boring piece of litter and re-bar strewn wasteland known as a “Special Stage”, in deepest, darkest Abu Dhabi. It’s a “Special Stage” in much the same way that some schools are “Special Schools”. For reasons known only to those of greater foresight and wisdom than I, this windswept, bland etc. etc. is now the regular home of the two minute televised spectator stage dash, designed to mix up the starting order a bit and to teach all the show offs a lesson. This year it was the turn of the second “G Force” team, car# 205, driven by Vladimir Vasilyev and co-driven by Vitaly Yevtyekhov, to make complete fools of themselves. As they passed the corner from which I was photographing, they spun the car round so hard that a large rock flew out and hit me on the back of the head (I was ducking for cover by then). Somewhat miffed by this, after regaining consciousness and borrowing 3 pints of blood, I shouted after them “You bounders, I jolly well hope you suffer from ill fortune within a very short space of time”. And 30 seconds later they rolled their car onto its side. HAH! Nobody messes with the Phantom Blogger and gets away with it. I can’t help wondering if tomorrow, that particular car will have been rebranded “Centripetal Force”

Oh you’ll notice from some of the shots that in an attempt to brighten up the windswept bland etc. etc. the organisers placed large blue and green plastic balls atop the steel marker posts. Many drivers struck these posts, causing their balls to fly off in different directions during the rally, whilst others drove ‘balls out’, meaning that they kept their car lined up between the balls, thus avoiding striking their balls on the front bumper. One driver drove over balls dropped by a previous competitor, crushing one of them and putting a nasty dent in the other. He struggled to cross the line and appeared to be in a great deal of discomfort. This is probably an opportune time to say “Thanks for all your hard work” to Dr. Sean Petherbridge and his medical / SAR team.

Unlike the Russians with the Countdown conundrum names, Ian and Sheila drove in a very considerate manner, allowing me to take a great many photographs with my Canon 7D camera and 70-200mm lens. They were all technically outstanding photos showing appropriate depth of field, perfect exposure, pin sharp details and yet eye wateringly beautiful motion blur of the wheels and scattered dust. I tell you that because not one of those pictures is here on this blog. For the first time in the 4 years I’ve been shooting with digital cameras, one of my memory cards became corrupted and I lost all the shots. Did it happen midway through the shoot so I could change cards? No it happened after I’d actually finished shooting, so I lost everything taken on that camera. Canon uses the CF format card and today I learned what those initials stand for. Completely Fubar. Fortunately, being the consummate professional (as opposed to a consummating professional) I also carry a second camera (my venerable – and reliable 40D) and the shots seen here today were captured with that. Hurrah for back up equipment.

Speaking of which, just an hour before I left the office to drive down to Abu Dhabi, TNT delivered the long lost drag link. So, unlike last year, this time when I carried some spare parts down to the team, a) they were the right parts, and b) they were genuinely happy to receive them.

Finally a quick “Bongiorno” to our mate Tommaso “No mates” Castellezi whose presence at the rally is always very welcome. Tommy earned this entirely inaccurate nick-name simply because he races his Land Rover Defender without the aid of a co-driver, thus “no mate” in the car. But the fact is that you won’t find a nicer, more pleasant and friendly competitor than Tommy (well, not now I’ve retired) and it’s great to see him back racing. “Forza Castelazzi”

Until tomorrow, ciao, arrividerci.

News just in: Ian and Sheila will start tomorrow in 14th position, which is an excellent spot. They finished the stage in 2’11”, 2 seconds ahead of Mark Powell, 6 faster than Dave Mabbs, and 7 faster than the team who have no scruples. Stick that in your baguette and smoke it.

Crisis averted

Just needed to take the race car out to calibrate the trip-meter, so we headed out on Al Qudra Road. After a couple of attempts we still needed to run another km, which took us past a parked police car - who promptly nicked us for driving a rally car on the road. So I followed him to Barsha Police Station, kicking out Sheila an route to pick up all the relevant documents and follow us there.

Finally they decided that the car must be impounded till Sunday, which would be a total disaster! At this point I realised industrial-strength wasta was called for. I asked Ronan Morgan if he could get Mohd Bin Sulayem on the case, and late yesterday evening he called back to tell me 'the fix was in'. After a nervous few hours we picked the car up this morning, took it to Abu Dhabi and breezed through scrutineering. I owe Ronan and Mohd big-time.

Not so lucky were our friends Matar Al Mansoori (wrong restrictor size) and Dave Mabbs (wrong restrictor, plus they need to stop oil coming out of the front diff and the timing cover). Sounds like they'll be working late tonight. 40 vehicles were still awaited from a vessel docking at 6am this morning, so that's 40 more teams who are worse off than us.

For once, and to our great surprise, we're ahead of the game.

Good news, bad news

Oh dear, how fickle are the media! One day you're the Next Big Thing, the next you're history. Despite the best efforts of the lovely Rebekka, my friend at GTV, her head office didn't green-light the plan - so the documentary is off. But we did get a few column-inches in 'Sport 360', with the promise of more to come in 'Adventure' magazine.

TNT have managed to let me down totally with shipping the drag-link, which languished in Oz for a week after they collected it, and is now due in Dubai on Sunday - the day we start the rally. So if anyone knows someone coming down to the bivvy, maybe we can find a way for it to catch up with us. At least I have a spare standard one in my sale-or-return kit, courtesy of Arabian Automobiles (Nissan distributor).

Today we completed documentation and took posession of the new improved ERTF GPS with integral Sentinel function, and its asssociated new cables and accessories. Only after plumbing in all the new cables did we discover that the French had cunningly provided a male connector on the new red button, to connect with the new male connector on the power cable. Now, call us old fashioned, but here at NewTrix Racing we don't hold with male-to-male connectivity, so Rick cut off their appendages (yes, sliced them through!) and used a bit of choc-bloc instead. So all is sorted, although the GPS may never be able to have children now.

This afternoon we shall do the stickers, and take the Beast up the road to calibrate the tripmeter. (Actually, that's just an excuse for a blat.)

The rally route, unsurprisingly, is very similar to last year's, and the prologue is once again on that uninspiring piece of reclaimed land beside Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi, garnished with building rubble and broken bits of rebar. Oh joy.

More soon.

Darlings of the Media

After having done precisely zero PR for the rally, we got a phone call from the nice man at Sport 360, our local sports daily. After a telephone interview at the weekend, a photographer duly arrived on Sunday afternoon to take some pictures of us and The Beast. We had to dress up in our rally gear and mime some fairly unconvincing rallying around Arabian Ranches, and allegedly this will result in our appearance in a pull-out DC supplement on Wednesday. Watch this space.

Today, German TV approached us to do a special on the only husband-and-wife team in the DC. They plan to do three video sessions, one pre-start, one at the start and another at the finish. This all sounds rather exciting, although I did have to promise to abstain from John Cleese impressions and avoid any mention of the 1966 World Cup for the duration of the event. When this 30-minute feature might air is as yet unknown, but we have been promised a copy of the finished piece.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Richard Bailey’s boss reneged on his promise to allow him time off for the DC and sent him to Norway instead (boo, hiss!). This is as much a blow for him as it is for us. However, under the pretext of recruiting for our Abu Dhabi F1 marshalling team, we met up with Ian Simpson. I promised him a week filled with adventure, excitement, travel to faraway places with strange-sounding names, and all the sand he could eat. He was easily seduced by my persuasive lies, and in a moment of madness signed up for a week of unspeakable hardship in the service of NewTrix Racing. So we now have a man whose CV highlights include ‘knowing one end of a spanner from the other’ and ‘being very good with tiewraps’. We’re going to try and build on this, and if he shows promise, we’ll introduce him to gaffer tape and binding wire. He will be driving the heavily laden VW Transporter from bivvy to Service Point and back every day, an essential if unglamorous role, and we extend the warm and sweaty hand of welcome to our new team member.

On the car front, we eagerly await the arrival of a heavy-duty sway-bar from Australia, having bent two standard ones into interesting banana shapes in the past. Our new rattle gun has arrived, to replace the old one. This has sadly endured greatly in the service of NewTrix, being run into by the dastardly French (boo, hiss!) and then destroying itself in an ultimately futile bid for freedom from its captivity in the back of the race car. I have managed to track down the correct GM belt tensioner to have as a spare, and hopefully a small pile of sale-or-return spares are waiting for me courtesy of the nice man at Arabian Automobiles, the Nissan dealer. The (Chinese) air-horns I installed before the UAQ solo race have died already, so I’ve replaced them with a pair of (Japanese) conventional horns which are equally deafening and seemingly less fragile. (Just don't get me started about the Chinese....)

The annual MOT (or should I say TRA) was also due this week, which meant Sunday was spent surviving the double whammy of a check-over by Rob Bryan at Bin Sulayem Performance, and then by the ‘experts’ at the Tasjeel. The first was no problem, the second – well, let’s just say I eventually got through without completely losing my rag.

That pretty much brings you, dear reader, up to date with the doings at NewTrix. The Phantom Blogger has once again been recruited to spread glad tidings of great joy (or not, as the case may be) on a daily basis during the event, so be sure to keep this blog on your watch list. Why not ‘Join this site’ as a follower? It doesn’t mean you’ll be deluged with spam, only that you’ll get an alert when a post is added to the blog. (Go on, you know you want to…)

Oh, and we're number 223 this year out of a total of 44 entries in the auto class. Go to www.abudhabidesertchallenge.com and you should be able to follow us through their live tracking - Inshallah.

Don’t they have weather in China?

As the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge approaches, we at NewTrix Racing desperately try to prepare ourselves for the major event of the year. Our joy at having Richard Bailey on the team was sadly short-lived – his boss reneged on his agreement to allow Richard to take time off for the DC and sent him to Norway instead. Fortunately, we have found an excellent replacement in Ian Simpson. He naively attended a meeting which Sheila arranged on the pretext of recruiting marshals for the Abu Dhabi F1, and I shanghaied him into our team for the DC with promises of travel, adventure, excitement and sand. But mostly sand.

One of the prep jobs is to sort out the Eezi-Up awning. Of course it’s not a real Eezi-Up because they cost an arm and a leg, although they do last for ever because they are made of Real Metal. This is a Carrefour special, one of two which we bought about three years ago, and it’s made in China. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about its build quality, China being the undisputed world leader in the manufacture of tat.

However, it has survived three outings at the DC, due to an ongoing programme of annual repairs and upgrades. The other one bit the dust the first year, but its passing has provided a comprehensive kit of spare parts to keep this one going. It has over the years benefited from progressive replacement of its feeble aluminium rivets with bolts and locknuts, and now boasts three-stage legs, giving it sufficient height to straddle the race car. However, its basic construction of lightweight monkey-metal means that the first breath of wind is likely to see a bundle of blue sheeting and mangled aluminium heading for the horizon.

Which begs the question – don’t they have weather in China? Are they completely unfamiliar with the concept of wind? Why, when they could make a substantial replica of a Eezi-Up for maybe half the price of the real deal, do they insist on making tat for 5% of the price? I guess that’s because idiots like me buy them.

Anyway, another year of repair and upgrade has made it battle-ready for the 2012 DC. Let’s just hope we don’t have any weather this year.

Triumph at last!

No, I haven't bought a TR6, although that's not such a bad idea.

There have been several 'Solo Races' held up at Umm Al Quwain Motorplex, which are short-course off-road time trials - sort of mini-rallies. A course of about 11km is run three times, and the best overall time wins.

Saluki Motorsport had just returned the Beast to, having done a very neat and permanent job of replacing the spider which holds the thrust bearing, They also re-fitted the P/S pump and found a broken front spring to replace, which explains why it was a bit lop-sided at Qatar. So I thought I'd give it a good shakedown by participating in today's Solo Race.

There were 4 vehicles in the buggy class - including Mark Powell - and another 7 in the 4x4 class. There were several V8 Patrols of one sort or another, one with a Land Cruiser 4.7L and another with a 4L out of a Lexus. The course was a tight,twisty track with a lot of bumps and drop-offs - not really my sort of course at all.

I went round the first time in 9 mins 47 secs, Mark was way quicker at 8.39, so no surprise there. One driver manages to pitch-pole his diesel Land Cruiser onto its roof, which rather delays the proceedings. The second time round I was again 9.47, which I assumed was either a coincidence or a mistake (probably the latter.) Third time round and again I managed to make a completely different set of mistakes from the first two rounds, but still finished in 9.47. (Mark unfortunately blew his clutch on that lap.)

So as I'm loading the car back on the trailer, the organisers call me over to tell me I've won the 4x4 class! I thought they were kidding, but no, I'm up for a photo with the big trophy!

First time I've ever won anything. Since both my (absent) spanner-men, Mr Carless and Mr Bailey are named Richard, it would be correct to say that I'm as happy as a dog with two Dicks.