The new team on the block this year, Suzuki and their SX4, the first pic is the engine and various other drive components of the car.
The first of these is the view of the service park from this really cool vantage point that Kim and I discovered while taking a bit of a break. I really love the cars in their packaging, as I've said before. In the second one you can see the front bumper of one of the BP Ford cars. The second hints at tyres.
This is the Red Bull PWRC team outside in the PWRC area, there weren't a lot of teams around yesterday but the cars that were there looked awesome. These are some of the cars that I will be interviewing by myself over Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The WRC cars I will go along with John Coker, who I haven't met yet, but have heard that he is very knowledgeable and has spent many years in the industry. The WRC drivers are, of course, harder to interview because of their prominence etc. So hopefully having both of us there will mean we can block other people out and get to the drivers and the stories they have for us!
Ah Subaru Impreza, where have you been all my life? It took me a while, but I love the new machine. So preeetty. The first picture is cool I thought, the cages for the Subaru alloys. This would be because of the control tyre - teams don't do anything with the tyres anymore. It's all done by Pirelli.
And in this final photo is Eugeniy Vertinov's car.
Monday afternoon/Night
The rest of the day was spent by me just walking around and running odd jobs really.
BUT, I was interviewed by the Waikato Times for a 'people' article about the rally. Volunteers and people involved, about five or six profiles, to run as a feature in the Saturday paper. So have a look, cause I will be in it!
We had a little staff meeting in the early evening, just making sure everyone knew what was going to happen and the layout of the days etc.
Then I popped home for a while, surprised because I was able to watch Private Practice, before going out to one of my bosses' bars, Rodeo Rodeo to catch up with one of the Ford mechanics I met last year, Ole.
Found out quite a few interesting thing, some of which will probably come back to me later on. I only had a couple of beers! But combined with my lack of sleep, my memory is lacking in detail.
- Last year the regulations meant that the teams could only have 8 mechanics working on the car at one time servicing during the event, this year it has been cut down to 6 and next year it will be merely 4 mechanics. Unbelievable, but true. Makes me wonder how much they will still be able to get done in their 20-30 minute allocated servicing times, considering they used to be able to change all the drive components in the car (this is in the BP Ford team) in something like 27 minutes. This is all to cut costs for teams and make it a cheaper series to run.
- Something I didn't know, was that the teams send out a 'recce team' to go with the drivers and help with pace notes while the driver's/co-driver's do their thing as well. Ole is doing that today.
- Staggered team arrival. For some stupid reason, after last year I had this image in my head with all the different team's mechanics, drivers/co-drivers and personnel all on the same flight, hanging out on the plane. Although I still think some of this could be true, it wouldn't be exactly as it is in my head. The Ford team (all of them) have been staggered out coming over. Some arrived late last week (including Mikko), some on Sunday night, and the rest late last night. I really wish I was in with another team so I had some way to contrast my views and learn more about how other teams do things. All in good time hopefully.
I'm sure there were more things that were interesting, maybe I'll remember more later.
Not too much has happened today yet, but it's still early :)
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