Tom Williams put in a giant character building performance on this weekend’s Rally Italy to overcome a multiple of problems and finish all the gruelling Sardinia-based gravel stages – although he was denied another points-scoring FIA Junior World Rally Championship result after holing the engine’s sump on the final stage, which prevented him completing the road section to the finish.
With temperatures approaching 40°C and 19 notoriously sun-baked rocky stages ahead, the 20-year old Oxfordshire driver made an understandably cautious start to the event in his M-Sport Ford Fiesta R2. It proved to be slightly too cautious, as the roads weren’t as rough as he’d feared, and a number of problems thereafter prevented Tom from making up for lost time – the most time-consuming of which was having to stop twice to change punctures.
Co-driven by Phil Hall, hopes of a push on the final day were also ruled out when Tom lost the use of the all-important third gear. A difficult event came to an end after an impact with a rock pushed the sump guard into the bottom of the engine, and despite an heroic effort to plug the hole, Tom was unable to drive all the way to the finish on the coast in Alghero. Nevertheless, an enormous amount of experience on one of the most difficult rounds of the JWRC had been gained, which will be of enormous benefit in the future.
Tom will register Rally Italy as his one allowed dropped JWRC score and move on to two more gravel rallies that he has previous experience of – Rally Finland (1-4 August) and his home double-points scoring Wales Rally GB (3-6 October).
Rally Italy started on Thursday evening, with 20,000 spectators filling the former motocross track in Ittiri to watch the opening super special stage. With a big jump and a deep watersplash, Tom took it relatively steady to complete the tricky test without problems.
Friday contained two loops of four stages, although the first stage of the day (SS2) was cancelled for all JWRC runners as a car had crashed and blocked the narrow gravel road. When Tom resumed driving against the clock on SS3, he found that the set-up of his car was too soft, as were his Pirelli K6 tyres, and there was also a problem selecting neutral and reserve gear. Knowing that a simple overshoot or minor spin would be a major issue, Tom was forced to take an even more caution approach – and did magnificently well to get his Fiesta R2 safely to midday service, where the M-Sport mechanics could work on the car.
One of Friday’s afternoon stages was also cancel (after a spectator fell ill), but at least Tom did tackle the long 13.82 mile (22.25km) Tula test, setting the sixth fastest JWRC time. Now with a harder set-up and harder Pirelli K4 tyres, Tom set a good pace in the afternoon and, despite a few minor technical issues and the ferocious heat, he completed the opening leg in eighth position.
Saturday was the longest day of the event, with a cluster of three very long stages a two and a half hour drive away from the Alghero service area. A good time on the first two stages moved Tom up to seventh, but then on the Monte Lerno stage he picked up a slow puncture and eventually had to stop to replace it. The afternoon loop started well, but after setting a great time on SS13, only a few seconds behind the top driver, Tom had a close encounter with a cow on SS14 and then had to stop again to replace another puncture on the repeat run through Monte Lerno.
With so much time lost and with nothing to lose, Tom was looking forward to pushing hard on the final day’s four stages – but his bad luck was set to continue. On the first stage of the day he skidded into the Fiesta R5 of Nil Solans, who had gone off the road on a tight right hand corner after a blind crest. With only very minor damage to the front wing, Tom continued – only for him to then lose third gear on the next stage and hit a rock and hole the sump on the final test.
Tom said: “Rally Italy has been a very hard event, but quite different from what people had told us about it and from what we therefore expected. We had a lot of different problems on this event, but the main area I want to work on is my pace notes. Even though the roads were quite smooth on the recce, people kept telling us how much they would cut up and how rough they would become, but I didn’t think they were very rough at all and we ended up having very over-cautious pace notes. I could have pushed a lot harder in places, so knowing where to go fast and where to back off was our main issue this weekend.
“We made a lot of set-up adjustments to the car during the event. We did our pre-event test in the UK, were it was a lot colder, and the set-up we were happy with in Wales just didn’t work in the extreme heat of Sardinia. Even on the shakedown, the car was handling so differently and it didn’t feel comfortable to drive at all. We got the car to work better by Friday afternoon, but on Saturday we lost a lot of time stopping to change two punctures, which meant that any chance of a good result had gone.
“Sunday was a really tricky day. We knew a car ahead of us had gone off, and because I was looking to see where it was I wasn’t concentrating on the pace notes, and suddenly the road turned sharp right on a blind corner and I followed Nil Solans into the bushes and hit the back of his car! On the following stage we lost third gear, and then on the final stage, towards the end, there was a very rough section, where we think we ran over a rock at an awkward angle, causing the hole in the sump. We spend about twenty minutes after the stage trying to fix the car, trying to plug the hole with foam paddling, clay, bits from nearby bushes and stuff from my medical box. We re-started the engine, and with two bar of pressure we set off again – hoping to complete the final road section back to the finish in Alghero. We drove for twenty kilometres, but when the engine got hot it melted the clay and everything became unplugged. We had no more clay, no more spare oil and no more materials to use, so we had to retire.
“On the few stages that we didn’t have a problem we were able to push and were happy with our pace, as we were only a few seconds off the top guys. It’s just going back to those pace notes and working on driving fast and being cautious at the same time. It’s a fine balance, and we’ll work hard to find it.
“There has been an awful lot of experience gained on this event, and a lot to analyse. We can certainly use this to make ourselves better in the future, starting next time out at Rally Finland.”