I agree a really tough and fun rally
Having taken my Z to 9th position in the 2005 event, My son & I really tried to push the car in the 2007 event, and after having a really good trouble free run except for a minor "off " into a river on the 6th day all was going really well and to plan.
The little incident with the river cost us 20min and moved us from 5th place to 7th. We then moved into Tanzania where we managed to get back up to 6th place on the first of the days section, but then all went wrong in a very bad way!!!!!
2.4Km from the end of the 2nd 116km stage, there was an ammendment that had to be made to the notes and the organisers had added an additional single caution drift 0.6k from one of the instructions, and we in the cockpit forgot to deduct the 0.6k from the original 1.31k instruction of triple caution blind concrete drift!!! so after the first drift my son read 1.31k to the triple caution instead on 0.71k, and we were doing about 150kph and hit it very hard, and rolled end over end twice and landed on the rear of the car then rolled over once and landed on the wheels. The rear end was badly pushed against the right rear tyre, and we could not go any further unless we had help and could pull out the part of the body work. ( Using another vehicle )
Lady Luck was with us as the Roll cage was intact and the car was mainly in the air rolling until it landed in the soft soil, so there was very little body work damage, which was a miracle for such a high speed crash.
We were not hurt at all, and as soon as the section was open we got our service car in to pull out the rear and we drove the car out of the section and then 100k to service.
We were not allowed to start the next 2 stages as we had badly damaged the fuel filling system and had to be repaired before we could resume for (saftey reasons).
We managed to find some Gas welding equipment, hammers, jacks and after some 8 hours and some very clever work from my crew (Sebastian Tham in particular ) we managed to get the repair certified.
We started the last day and finished the next stages and also the rally, but unfortunalty having taken maximum penalties in sections we did not do we still managed 25th Overall.
We were very lucky and there was very little damage to the car, which was remarkable, and it is now being repaired, and I will compete in the Sept 2008 "Alice Springs to the Gold Coast in Austraila"