MotorsTV UK Official Blog

Hi everyone,

I’m back from Rallye Deutschland and at M-Sport headquarters today catching up on some emails.  

I’m quite pleased with my result in Germany – we hadn’t done any testing in the [Ford] Focus on asphalt since the last all-tarmac round in Bulgaria in June so I wasn’t sure how it would go.  We had a few ups and downs throughout the weekend, I didn’t have as much experience using the hard compound Pirelli P-Zero tyres compared to the softer tyres so our times suffered a little bit.  It was good to get some practice using them though, especially as we have two further asphalt rounds coming up this season.

Saturday was probably our most difficult day, we had a whole new set of notes for Saturday morning’s stages so that slowed us down and then Kimi Räikkönen, who we had been ahead for most of the rally, started to pull away from us.  It was so frustrating.  However, Sunday was much better and we put in a clear run on the day’s first stage which put us back in the hunt.  Kimi was close on our tail throughout the day though and as the last stage of the rally was a Super Special I was pretty nervous – Kimi had a definite advantage as it was his preferred surface from his Formula One days.  He put in the fastest time but I finished the Super Special second-fastest and secured sixth place ahead of him.  I was pleased to have fought back and it’s been my best result in Germany to date – a good rally all round.

We also had some new team-mates in Germany – Francois Duval and Denis Giraudet.  I hadn’t worked with Francois for a couple of years and it was nice to see him back in a rally car after several months away from the WRC. Scott [Martin] and I were impressed by how fast he was, especially on Saturday before he had his big crash.  We were behind him on the stage and saw what had happened before everybody else – Francois was standing outside the car which was on its roof and waved us on but I couldn’t see Denis.  We were both concerned as we hadn’t seen Denis and thought maybe something had happened to him but we later found out he was OK – it was a huge relief.  The guys were lucky in a sense – the hinkelsteins that are littered at the side of that stage are designed to stop tanks as the area used to be a military zone, if they’d impacted directly on a hinkelstein instead of just beside it then it could have been much, much worse. 

I’m going to London tomorrow for a couple of days with my family but then I’ll be back at the end of this week to prepare for Japan.  Japan is an interesting place – it’s so different culturally.  I’ve got a bit of a love-hate relationship with the country, it’s great initially because it’s so different but after I’ve been there for a week I’m ready to come home again. We’ve got a good track record over there – I finished fourth there a few years ago so hopefully we can do well again there this year.  I can’t believe there’s only four WRC rounds remaining – this year has gone so quickly, I’m aiming for another top five before the end of the season.

MW

Just back from Rally Bulgaria, and it was a very tough event.

It was great to see a World Rally Championship round held somewhere new for a change though.  We enjoyed having Poland on the calendar last year, so we were looking forward to another rally in Eastern Europe again this year.  New rallies are good for keeping the WRC calendar fresh and exciting.  It helps keep all the drivers on their toes too – nobody knew what to expect from the stages so we were all in the same boat.

I was slightly disappointed with my overall result.  I hadn’t driven on tarmac since Spain last year, and after so many gravel rounds this year it took me a lot of time to adjust to the change of surface.  I was really pleased for our new team-mates P-G and Jonas – considering it was their first outing in a Ford Focus they did extremely well and I hope they’ll get a chance to compete under the Stobart banner with us again soon.  They’re brilliant guys and extremely focused.

It turned out to be a very, very fast rally – quicker than most other tarmac rounds and a lot faster than Catalunya.  It was also quite an unusual event as the road surface was so dirty, which is not typical of normal European tarmac round.  Over the first two days the stages reached over 2100 metres, making it the highest WRC round held in Europe and similar to the sort of altitudes we experienced in Mexico earlier this year.   There were parts of the stages that were very technical and some sections were rough with broken up asphalt, which made it difficult to interpret.  Scott [Martin] did a great job with the pace notes though and I felt I was starting to get used to handling the car by the final day.  It’s just a shame it took me so long to adjust after driving on gravel for so long.

Now I’m back at home in Cumbria and preparing for Finland.  I’m spending some time this week looking at the data from Bulgaria with my engineers to see where I can improve my performance for the three remaining tarmac rallies.  Fortunately, the next tarmac rounds should be easier than Bulgaria – we know the stages from Germany and Spain and I’ll know how to get the best from the car next time round.

I’m really looking forward to Finland, it’s the spiritual home of rallying and there’s a huge buzz all week, it’s definitely one of the best rallies of the championship.  It’s always a real test with the massive jumps and impacts on landing, but I’ve always managed to finish inside the top ten there so it’s been a good rally for me in the past.  Naturally the Finns do very well at this event, and it’s usually dominated by local drivers who know the stages like the back of their hands, but if I maintain a good pace throughout I’m confident I’ll be able to improve on my eighth place finish from last year.

Mikko [Hirvonen] won Rally Finland last year and as it’s also his 30th birthday when we’re there, I expect he’ll be hungry to win it again.  The rest of us will have to chase him as best we can!

Hello everyone, June was supposed to be a month off from the WRC calendar but it’s been a crazy few weeks for me and it hasn’t felt like any form of break!

Myself, Scott [Martin, co-driver] and Barry [fitness trainer] went to Corsica the week after we got back from Rally de Portugal to complete the Tour de Corse cycle challenge in aid of The RPJ Crohn’s Foundation. Considering there was a group of us doing a 1000km bike ride, I was really surprised at how smoothly everything went – we didn’t get any punctures or encounter any major problems for the entire week. Scott did a good job of sorting out our schedule before we left but we didn’t always stick to it and when we were having a good day, we really pushed ourselves. On the final day we only had 100km left to reach the end and that’s when the adrenaline kicked in! It was mostly downhill at that stage so we just bombed it to end and finished well ahead of schedule. It was such a good feeling to finally make it to the finish.

There was one epic day where we did 171 kms round the Corsica coast – the weather was perfect and the scenery was unbelievable. A real low point was about half way through when we had to do a 34km climb up to 1477 metres – it was such hard work and a real test of our endurance. It was also very hot whilst we were cycling – it never fell below 33 degrees Celsius – but on one afternoon we had a bit of rain which felt amazing after the intense heat. I caught a cold on the final weekend which made the last two days cycling very hard going. Despite this, I really enjoyed the whole experience and it was so satisfying to get to the end of the 1000km and raise money for such a good cause. Since we’ve been back, we’ve also been doing some extra fundraising through eBay and we’ve even sold one of my old race suits. I’m currently selling my signed t-shirt from the Tour de Corse (don’t worry, it’s been washed!) and some various signed merchandise from M-Sport including a signed book from Valentino Rossi. You can view what’s all up for sale here – Tour de Corse charity auction.

After all that I did manage to escape to the south of France for a few days holiday, but now I’m back to work and preparing for Rally Bulgaria next week. This is the first time there has been a WRC round there so I’m intrigued as to what it’ll be like. It’s good in the sense that the stages will be new to everyone so no driver will hold any clear advantage over another in terms of knowing the roads better. It’s also going to be the first all tarmac round of the season and I think this is bound to throw up a few surprises along the way. Looking forward to getting stuck into it and I’ll update you on what Bulgaria is like when I get there.

MW

You can follow live updates from Matthew on Twitter via www.twitter.com/StobartWRC or become a fan of the official Stobart M-Sport Ford Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stobart-M-Sport-Ford-Rally-Team/10150137030195403?ref=ts

Phew, that was a tough one.

Rally de Portugal is a great event in a superb location, but there was no time for sightseeing for me.  It was a tight schedule on this event so we were totally focused on the rally from start to finish and didn’t get to see much apart from dusty rocky roads.

The stages were really tough, a lot rougher than in previous years and certainly some of the hardest in the WRC so far in 2010.  It was a hard event on both the cars and the tyres.  On every loop we had to be a little bit careful on the tyres and just think about how we managed them to avoid punctures.  In some ways that’s difficult as you always want to drive flat out, but I think it brings an another element of challenge and strategy to the rally too.

The opening day on Friday was pretty good for Scott and I and we didn’t have any big problems.  Saturday was a different story though as we struggled with brake issues and that cost us a lot of time over the course of the day.  We were back on it on Sunday though and to round it off with a second-fastest time in the Algarve Stadium in front of all the fans was a great way to finish the event.  The atmosphere at the stadium is always brilliant and the crowd really gets behind the drivers, so you always want to put on a show for them.  It was a real shame my team-mate Henning Solberg had to retire on the last day though, as we had been having a good battle during the rally and we were on for a good combined points haul for the Stobart M-Sport Ford team.

Now I’m back in Cumbria there’s no time to stop either.  Scott and I are about to head off on the Tour de Corse, a 985km charity cycle challenge.  We’re doing it in aid of the RPJ Crohn’s Foundation, which was set up earlier this year by our friend Rick Parfitt Jnr to help raise funds to support the National Association for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease (NACC).  It’s brilliant cause so we’re aiming to raise at least £5000.

It’s going to be a real slog but we’ve done plenty of training for it and Scott and I are really looking forward to seeing more of the island of Corsica than we do on a rally.  You do realise when you’re driving it’s a spectacular place, you just don’t get much time to enjoy it as the scenery whizzes past the window at well over 100kmh!  It’s a place steeped in rally history so we’re hoping to get a lot of support from the fans over there whole we are pedalling away.

We’ll also be promoting M-Sport’s home town of Cockermouth as we go with big stickers on our motorhome.  The area has had a hard time over the past year or so due to the floods and so on, so we want to raise awareness that it’s open for business and tourism again.  We’ll be posting regular pics and updates to our Facebook page along the way so be sure to check out it out (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tour-de-Corse/115014471868039).

When we get back it’s straight into preparations for Rally Bulgaria.  It’s a tarmac event so I’ll be doing some work with my driver coach just to get into the groove for the change of surface.

Until then I’ll be on my bike!

MW

For more information on the challenge including route and photographs, please visit: http://www.tourdecorse.co.uk/

Anyone who would like to help with Matthew Wilson and Scott Martin’s fundraising can donate online via the Justgiving website:  http://www.justgiving.com/tourdecorse

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