21-06-2010
Verslag Haute Senne: Tom Cave I have a lot more confidence heading for Ypres
Teenage rally driver Tom Cave finished this weekend's Rallye de la Haute Senne in Belgium third overall on his tarmac debut in his Proton Satria Neo Super2000. He finished behind fellow Proton driver Chris Atkinson and local hero Patrik Snijers, who took the win.
Cave, like the official Proton drivers Alister McRae and Atkinson, was using the event as a test and warm-up for next weekend's GEKO Ypres Rally, the next round of the Intercontinental Rally Championship. As such, the Haute Senne was the perfect event, featuring four loops of three stages. This would allow Tom to learn the Proton on tarmac and refine an asphalt set-up as the day went on.
His day began well, with no problems over the opening loop of stages. The Davies Motorsport Services technicians made several changes to the car's settings at Tom's request and this helped on the next loop of stages.
However, on the sixth stage of the event, he picked up a puncture and elected to drive to the end of the stage on the flat tyre, rather than lose time changing it within the stage. Despite this, he still dropped around 45 seconds in the process.
He attacked the stages in the afternoon with renewed pace and was able to claw back some of the lost positions, much to the annoyance of the local drivers. By the end of the event, he reached third place, a remarkable achievement on his first outing in a four wheel-drive car on tarmac.
Commenting, Tom said; "Overall, this has been a very good event, both for us and I suspect, for the Proton team. We had no problems at all with the car and were able to make numerous adjustments to its set-up to develop what I feel is a really good base for Ypres next weekend."
"We ran 110Km today on tarmac very similar to what we'll find next weekend, so I couldn't have asked for more. The car felt great, we set some stage times that I was personally very pleased with and now, I have a lot more confidence heading for Ypres."
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