on Rally Kekava
Welsh schoolboy Tom Cave’s 2008 rally campaign got off to a perfect start this weekend in Latvia, as the 16 year-old, driving a Group N Ford Fiesta on the Rally Kekava finished the event 19th overall and second in class, by a margin of just 1.5 seconds. Even more impressive is the fact that without ten seconds of penalties picked up for clipping marking cones en route, Cave would have won the 2WD class and finished 15th overall, from a field of 131 starters.
Tom was using the event, the second round of the Latvian RallySprint Championship, as a shakedown for the start of his actual 2008 campaign, the Latvian National Rally Championship. The objective of this weekend’s 50Km event was to establish a base set-up for the Fiesta and get to know the car under competition conditions.
The event started on Saturday evening with a pair of Tarmac stages, while the remainder of the event, six stages on Sunday, were on gravel. The Tom Cave Racing team opted to run the car in gravel trim throughout the event but use tarmac tyres for the two short stages on Saturday.
Both Cave and co-driver Gemma Price were surprised to find themselves 11th overall after the first two tests of the rally, despite picking a five-second penalty on the first stage when they clipped a chicane with the rear wheel of the m3motorsport-run Fiesta.
The gravel stages on Sunday transpired to be much drier than the crews had found on the pre-event recce, since the sandy roads had drained well once the recent wet weather had abated. Again, Cave and Price fell into an excellent rhythm on the Latvian stages and consistently set top-four class stage times throughout the day.
They picked up another five-second penalty on the event’s fourth stage and at the time, did not realise the implication of a relatively small error in judgement. However, by the end of the event, they completed the 50Km rally 19th overall and second in class, a tantalising 1.5 seconds behind class winner Kaspars Brencis in a Honda Civic Type R.
Cave was understandably delighted with the result. Speaking from the finish ramp in Kekava just outside Riga, he said; “This is a brilliant result; for me, for Gemma and of course, for the TCR team. The objective for this weekend was to gain as much experience as possible and get the car ready for the Talsi Rally next month. We achieved that without question and to get this result on top of that is fantastic.
“I settled into the car from the first stage and by the time we got to the first gravel stage, I was really starting to feel at home with it. I was pleased with the set-up we started the event with and we only made some very small changes along the way. We had no trouble whatsoever with the car – it ran faultlessly throughout the event.
“It was quite frustrating to pick up the penalties for clipping the cones on the two stages. We briefly considered appealing the decision but it’s a very clear regulation and therefore, we had to accept our mistakes. When I did it a second time, I never thought that five seconds would make such a difference to the potential results and I was gutted to have lost the class win by just 1.5 seconds.
“However, that doesn’t detract at all from what we achieved this weekend. We set out to complete the event and learn as much as we could and we did just that. To finish second in class is a great result for all involved and I am thrilled.”
Co-driver Gemma Price, who competed in the FIA World Rally Championship prior to teaming-up with Cave, was impressed with the 16 year-old’s performance over the weekend. “Tom drove extremely well this weekend, especially considering we were in the Fiesta for the first time in competition. He was accurate, stable and overall, put in a very mature drive.”
Cave’s next outing will be the second round of the Latvian National Championship, the Talsi Rally, over the weekend of 17/18 May. This will be Cave’s first, as he missed the season opener due to an injured elbow.
