Rally van Staden 2024 Report

Bill Paynter and Andy Hollingham brought home a fantastic top ten finish after a dramatic day on the Rally van Staden.

The weekend kicked off on Saturday 10th August when the BP Rally Team setup in the town centre service area and completed the usual processes with documentation, technical checks and the recce all taking place. The event had a shorter than usual allocated time for the reconnaissance, but Bill and Andy did their best to write pacenotes on stages that were completely new to them.

When Sunday came the sun was shining and with a forecast of over 30 degrees celsius, it was going to be a tough day sat in the hot rally car, with all of the fireproof gear and safety equipment. Tyre choice seemed obvious, to bolt on medium compound slicks, the hardest compound that the team had available. The team also stiffened the suspension settings, searching for more performance in the dry in comparison to recent outings.

The rally consisted of four loops of three stages, with 12 stages in total covering 140 competitive kilometres. As has been the theme in recent events, Bill and Andy shot out of the blocks on the first stage, “Staden to Zarren”, and set a brilliant 12th fastest time out of the 115 starters.

Stage 2 was a bit more eventful, with the Subaru really struggling for grip on the deceptively slippery stages. An overshoot on one particular junction sapped confidence, although a Mark Higgins style recovery, putting the handbrake to full use spinning the car around in a crossroads, meant not too much time was lost. The team also had a close call with one of the infamous Belgian ditches when the rear end lost grip on a medium speed corner.

The crew backed off for the third and final stage of the loop, Westrozebeke, with confidence levels low, but still sat in a fine 14th position at the end of the loop.

Back in service the BP Rally team adjusted suspension settings to try and find some grip on the surprisingly slippery and dusty surface.

The team left service, had reset mentally and feeling ready to rebuild the confidence. That feeling was however short lived, as when queuing to go over the start ramp for the next loop, in Staden town centre, the neutral selector cable on the Subaru’s sequential gearbox snapped. This meant that there would be no way of engaging neutral or reverse gears for the rest of the loop, until the team could look to repair in service. This added pressure and didn’t help the nerves, as Bill knew they were in big trouble and would lose a lot of time if they needed to reverse on stage. No mistakes were allowed!

Drama then heightened on SS4 when the Subaru’s rear end slid wide at low speed on a gravelly square junction, just clipping the rear corner on a concrete telegraph pole. Those concrete posts simply do not move! Not too much time was lost with it just being a glancing blow, but rear light, bumper and spoiler were all destroyed in the process. Dragging the remains panels through to the finish of the stage. Due to panels touching on the hot exhaust and tyres, the cockpit filled with smoke and the smell of burning was quite unnerving. Fortunately, the team discovered at the end of the stage that no fire was present.

With the Impreza’s back end remodelled, the crew set about patching the car up on the road section. The team’s service crew Gary and Scott gave advice at refuelling, although they couldn’t touch the car to help with repairs or the team would face penalties for outside assistance. The car was driving straight and damage purely cosmetic, but another knock to the confidence on the fast and very low grip stages.

Bill and Andy then headed to Stage 5, Oostnieuwkerke, with adrenaline already pumping from what had been a frantic road section. As the Subaru was pulled onto the start line, the stage was red flagged, as another car had an accident and was blocking the stage. Bill and Andy sat on the start line for around 25 minutes, whilst the wreckage was cleared before the stage as restarted.

Once into the stage the car was feeling good and the suspension changes made in service enabled the team to start finding some confidence once again. A clean couple of stages and the team remained in 14th position overall. Back into service and the car received some much needed TLC from team members Gary Le Coadou and Scott Barnes.

The third loop was again used to continue building up the speed. Many changes had been made to the pacenotes throughout the morning due to the lack of recce time, and on this loop Bill could really start to trust the notes. Commitment was slowly increasing and the battle scarred Subaru could start to climb it’s way up the leader board.

It seemed on the final fourth loop, something had clicked into place. The confidence felt earlier in the year was back, and the team were really starting to enjoy themselves, posting some great times on the last three stages. The Impreza was once again feeling playful, with the crew having a lot of fun grabbing the car by the scruff of its neck out on the stages. The biggest challenge now was the extreme heat with temperatures peaking in the mid 30’s, drinking lots of water was a must.

A fast final loop saw the BP Rally team make it into the top ten at the end of the day, finishing an excellent 10th place overall, only 2.6 seconds away from 9th. A hard earned result for the team, delighted to hit our goal of breaking into the top ten, in our first proper year rallying over in Belgium. The Subaru is now looking a little second hand, with a fair bit of work needed, but we brought it over the finish ramp with a cracking result, she’ll be back looking shiny again soon. A massive thank you to everyone who helped both on and in the build up to the event, as well as the organisers and our partners- TRS Motorsport, Alltec Seys and JFDIT Solutions.