The protagonists today include faces I had never seen before in competition and cars that sound like ngalabi and nankasa all at the same time. On the line up, we had:
- Jas Mangat (Subaru N12 - when I retired he was driving an 80s Golf!),
- Sebuguzi (Evo 9 - formerly in an EVO 4),
- Duncan Mubiru aka Kikankane (Subaru TMR 08 - when I retired both the car and the driver were not yet even born)
- Susan Muwonge (2004 Subaru Spec C - used to head the gals club but now national champion in a class full of men),
- Christakis Fitidis (Subaru N12 - this one was supposed to be a dinosaur who rallied an Audi Ur Quattro in the 80s),
- Nasser Mutebi (2004 Subaru Spec C - The 2010 national champion had never sat at the wheel of a rally car when I retired)
- Ponsiano Lwakataka (Subaru version 8 - former 2-time national champion and winner of POAUR in 2011)
- Shafik Ssemujju (Subaru N11 - when I retired he was 19, I hear he is still 19 but in a works car)
- John Consta (Subaru version 8 - in his debut year of competition but super fast)
- Manraj Sandhu (Subaru N12 - a Tz based mercenary I was told).
It quickly became clear to me that my decision to come rallying in a 1.8 Litre, 2WD, Normally aspirated, Show-room spec, 2002 Toyota Allex was a mistake. My lack of recent competition experience handicap was now compounded by my equipment handicap. One other thing, retirement eventually kills the insane passion for the sport. Any competitor above the age of 33 must be as busy if not busier than me, but I can only find the time to make one pass of the route recce. The others had gone over the course so many times and knew it back to front - apart from having competed on nearly the same roads over the last so many seasons. So while my co-driver and partner for life (queen and love of my life) was begging the COC for us to be promoted in the start order, I was skeptical and comfortable with starting last and if I never caught anyone, at least no one was going to catch me. When the rally started we were drawn to start 16th and behind Ahmed Sempebwa and Mansur Sanya who Layla had passed on the stage in rallies she had driven in 2008 just after I retired. Layla was concerned that we would have to suffer the same trial - for it is always a question of losing time or risking going off the road in the dust.
The rally started traditionally with the super special stage in the Jinja Agricultural Show grounds where we quietly set 10th fastest time on both runs of the spectator stage. My antennae shot up. 10th fastest is nothing to write home about except if you are driving a sheep among wolves - a pack of at least 20, 4 dogs and 3 cats. In a line up of 28 cars including at least 24 4wd turbo charged beasts, we had done incredibly well. And I wasn't even trying hard. I did receive some advice from Fitidis on how to negotiate the round-about but then he didn't know that I was the round-about consultant :-). It was a sign however. If I could maintain that position and finish 10th at the end of the rally, I would be elated. However, I was conscious that there were some powerful pajjis who had not done so well at the super special and were bound to push me out of the top 10 once the rally proper started. Nasser Mutebi was one of them and our hope of remaining in the top ten lay in the very likely possibility of one or two cars in the top flight class failing to finish.
During the overnight stop, I tried to go over our notes while listening to the pitta-patta of the tropical rain that doesn't beat down hard and fast, rather flows relentlessly - all night. I was sure the stages would be wet in the morning and that meant a change in tact. You see, when we had done the recce, I got tired and remembered nothing of CS7 and CS8, which were the tightest and roughest of all the stages. I had planned to go fast over the morning stages and coast to the finish. However, now I was in a bind. I couldn't go all out in the wet, never mind that I had never raced a FWD car. Ever. I started rallying in 4WD which I now know was a mistake, but that will be a whole other story. I also couldn't go all out on the afternoon stages which I didn't remember well and which were also rougher compared to the rest. It was easier to plan for where our boys would spend Eid day in our absence, so I made a few calls to family and fell asleep.
In the morning, Ahmed Minjo set up Eid prayers at the Crested Crane Institute gardens and that helped a lot in getting my mind off the wet quagmire that awaited us. Nonetheless, the rally still started badly. Seeing as we had no special tires for the wet, for the first service I had given instructions to reduce the tire pressure from 32 to 28. But to my shock, all my tires were giving readings of between 20 and 22. Apparently when they were fitted by Sam at Hass Bakuli he thought he heard me say 22 instead of 32!!! NO one in the service park had a compressor. I just prayed that the roads would remain wet until we got to service, otherwise we would puncture the only 4 tires we had for the whole rally.
We overtook Sempebwa in CS3 and again in CS4 which was deja vu. However, we had failed to even touch 180 kph even on the longest of stretched in CS4. I was especially worried because Fred Wampamba (Toyota Celica ST182 2WD) was posting times in the same minute as us. I wanted to blame the car but if I did, it only meant that I had to squeeze more fear out of me. Over CS5 and CS6 I applied a little more aggression and the results showed, we were in 9th overall, 2 minutes ahead of Duncan Mubiru and a comfortable 8 minutes clear of the person in 11th. More importantly I had seen why we had failed to reach the top speed in the previous super fast CS4. The down side was that the car had been badly damaged and the front left suspension tower threatened to tear off.
To be fair we had not done a good job of seam welding the car as the job was done in the heat of preparations for POAUR so we had asked to 7 days to prepare it and return it to the customs bonded warehouse for registration ahead of the rally. The time wasn't enough and the car did not get registered nor compete in the pearl. When it finally did, I was too eager to sort out a drive shaft issue that I paid no attention to the structural issues. We tried to get help in service but the only crew who had a welding machine had also suffered similar trouble and their weld job was taking longer they had already exceeded the 20 minutes normally allowed for service. I decided to take on the stages at recce speed ie taking care to detect, visually inspect and avoid each pot hole and trench instead of following our pace notes which had marked some of these as innocuous. No mean feat I tell you.
We were almost caught in CS7 by Mansur Sanya and now I wasn't sure anymore that our 8 minute cushion to remain in the top 10 would remain. I was so worried that even at 30 kph I did not, at the beginning of CS8, see the crash wreck of Duncan Mubiru's super car or the crowd that was picking souvenirs from it. At last we cleared the very rough 10 km of that stage and cruised over the last few kms to the finish, but not before encountering Susan Muwonge who had stopped 1km before the finish. At the finish we learnt that Albert Ofong came within 1 minute of over-taking us in the overall position although it wouldn't have mattered. We had finished 8th overall against an objective of 10th.
The rally was fun, as it should be. 2WD is really cheap and for what it costs, it is fun. It can never really beat the big wolves but perhaps with more experience and a little development, it can get into the middle of the top 10. Now am looking forward to the next rally and to proving that choosing to rally 2WD on the cheap was not a mistake after all.
