I woke at 05:30 in the middle of a Somerset forest and planned our attack. At the start I had a feeling we were going to do extremely well.

It was the third stage when we caught up with the car ahead, dust flying. He flicked through a chicane, left then right. We were on his tail, left then right. I bipped the horn, but he didn't pull over. He was slowing us down a lot. So I bipped again and as he pulled over we sped past him, mid bend, 90 left.

Bang! We hit a massive bump, throwing the car in the air. I was sure we had shredded a tyre, but kept the pressure on, leaving the other car a mile behind. We flew over the finishing line after one of our best runs ever.

I snatched a quick look at the tyre, which was okay. So we continued onto the next stage, flying faster than ever. At our 10 minute service Gary and Adam looked under the bonnet. The suspension mounting was torn apart, the welding unzipped to a six inch hole.

Could we carry on? It was only a hole after all?

Our rally was over. Four stages completed out of the twelve. We solemnly retired, handing over our official papers.

When we arrived back at HQ the Daihatsu support team said he could fix it. 'You haven't retired have you?' he asked. I was half way through drowning our defeat with a second beer and said yes.

'Get your papers now, get them back!' But we were over our time limit, having missed out a stage. Game over.

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the rest of the cars, going over and over what had happened. I had a lot of beer and forgot about it. I don't like watching other rally cars. See you in Silverstone.

ENDS

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