It was a wet and miserable day for the long drive down to Abu Dhabi, with the Beast on the trailer. For Richard it was even longer - the fully laden Canter is no speed-machine. First order of business was to collect the rest of the race car stickers - rally control had managed to give us only 2 of the 7 rally stickers at documentation. That sorted, and the ERTF GPS checked, we head over to scrutineering, where by some miracle there is absolutely no-one ahead of us in the queue. Everything was going along swimmingly - until the last counter where the FIA restrictor was found to be over-sized! This 36mm unit was the same one we'd used without issue for the past 2 years, but today Lionel Carre's tool slipped through it. Let me re-phrase that: his MANDREL slipped through it. And that's a problem.
Apparently we weren't the only ones to fall foul of the French tool. Tom's Patrol - with a restrictor from the same source - also failed. But Rick had a solution, involving a ball peen hammer, a curved anvil, a caliper gauge and some scientific hammering. After several rounds of hammering and checking, the dimension finally met with FIA approval, and we were given the all important sticker to add to our collection. Rick then hammered Tom's restrictor into submission, thereby earning Newtrix valuable brownie points with Sabertooth Motorsports - who will be our neighbours at the bivouac.
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| Scientific hammering |
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| Beast with stickers. Did I mention the slope? |
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| Arty-farty photography |
There followed a session with Wolf from SportTraxx to explain the new tracking and comms system, which replaces the old Iritrack, after which we left the Beast, its trailer, and the Canter at Rally HQ and took the tow-car back to Dubai.
Tomorrow there's drivers' briefing at 1100hrs, and the prologue at 1500hrs - although there is some doubt about the latter as the course is presently waterlogged. Watch this space!
Live tracking will be available from Sunday on www.abudhabidesertchallenge.com - car 222.
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