Bom Dia from the sunny Algarve!

I’m writing this blog from the service park after shakedown.

I left home in Cumbria on Monday at 3.30am to get my flight from Manchester. It had been a busy few days before we left as we had a 105km bike ride in Keswick on the Saturday.  There were over 400 people taking part and we finished in the top twenty, so it was a good result.  It was such hot weather for the UK at the weekend so it was really tough – it was good training for Corsica though which will be hot for the week we do our Tour de Corse.

We arrived in Portugal on Monday lunchtime and it’s been getting gradually hotter since we got here.  It’s supposed to be nearly 30 degrees Celsius on Sunday, so the temperatures inside the car could reach over 50 degrees – which won’t makes things easy for our final day.  During Monday afternoon Scott and I watched the recce video from last year to refresh our memories of what some of the stages are going to be like.  We are quite familiar with the stages so we didn’t have to make any huge changes to pacenotes.  I managed to fit in a bit of training too – I’m supposed to be doing a triathlon in Spain in the autumn so I’ve been doing a lot of swimming lately.  We have a swimming pool at our hotel in Vilamoura so it meant I could easily do some lengths before the rally.

Tuesday was a really long recce day.  There’s probably only about 20km different compared to last year’s rally route, but because it is later in the season than in previous years the ground is dustier and everything is much drier. Our set up worked well last year so I don’t think we’ll change too much this time round.

Wednesday’s recce was slower so it was a shorter day for us both.  I managed to do some more swimming training in the afternoon which was good.

Today (Thursday) was a good day and the shakedown went well generally.  We overshot a junction on the last run and lost around three seconds so it wasn’t a very good time, but we were short on fuel at that point so didn’t have enough time to get back to the service park and out for another test.

I think every day is going to be tough in this rally, even though Sunday is the shortest day I still think it will be hard because it features some long stages.  The main problem we’ll have out here in Portugal is tyre-wear – the nature of the stages are very abrasive and the rising temperatures will not make it easy for any of us competing.  In Jordan the temperatures were so hot I drank up to 14 litres of water a day, so I imagine it may be similar out here and we’ll have to keep our fluid levels high. 

There have been a few tweaks to the car after shakedown today – we’ve made everything a bit lower and stiffer so the Super Special Stage tonight will be a bit easier on the car.  I always have a really good time in Portugal and it’s ideal being based in Vilamoura for the rally because there’s lots to see and do and a selection of restaurants by the harbour.  There is also a brilliant atmosphere and the Algarve Stadium right next to the service park provides the perfect buzz for the rally start.

MW

If you’d like to help sponsor Matthew and Scott on their mammoth 1000km charity cycle challenge round Corsica next month you can donate via the Justgiving website:– http://www.justgiving.com/tourdecorse

You can follow live updates from Matthew on Twitter via www.twitter.com/StobartWRC or visit the Stobart Facebook fan page

Tags: rally, rally route, training

Posted in WRC
No Comments Yet Posted by Matthew Wilson