February 2009
Our first rally of the year is fast approaching, and I can't wait to get back out in the car! The team and I will be heading down to Cumbria on Thursday 5th of March for the shakedown stage, before the opening round of the Ford Fiesta Sporting Trophy is kick started on Saturday with the Malcolm Wilson Rally. Martin Forrest will be co-driving for me on this event as Andrew has to miss the rally due to family reasons. I'm looking forward to working with Martin; he has a wealth of experience and will bring a huge value to the team.
Earlier this month I was at the Snowman Rally, the first round of the Hankook Scottish Rally Championship. I was lending a hand by marshalling at the start line of stage 3. The conditions were pretty difficult in the stages with heavy snow and ice catching out many of the crews. I really wished I could have done the event as it looked great fun, but I enjoyed marshalling the start line sending the cars off into the stage. Some of the two-wheel-drive cars were setting some fantastic times, and it was good to see the lower powered cars doing so well.
I've been working on the build up to the start of the season to get everything in place, and we've managed to get some exciting new features in place. Something new for this year is our partnership with technical partners Millers Oils Motorsport. We will be working closely with them during the 2009 season and I'm looking forward to the exciting prospect of being involved with a company with such a world class product line up.
The team and I are putting the final plans in place for the Malcolm Wilson Rally. The car is currently at North East Specialist Coatings body shop to get all of the battle scars removed from last season, and then we will be finalising the new 2009 livery at Neil Philip Sign Writing. On the week leading up to the rally I'll be stepping down my physical training and switching to a conditioning routine, whilst also focusing heavily on hydration and dietary intakes.
The strategy for the Malcolm Wilson Rally will be to get to the finish to bag some early championship points. With some new names registered for the championship they will be a bit of an unknown quantity, so this event will give us an opportunity to gauge who the front runners are going to be, and whose times we need to be paying attention to!
So that's about it for just now. If you see me or the team out on the Malcolm Wilson Rally come and say hello or you can drop me an email at info@steviebrown.co.uk
Cheers for now,
Stevie
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