Tom Cave will be looking for sun, sea and success next weekend as he and co-driver Craig Parry tackle the opening round of the 2011 Dulux Trade MSA British Rally Championship, Rallye Sunseeker. Buoyed by an excellent result on the BTRDA season opener, the Wyedean last weekend, Cave and Parry will be looking for a solid result to get their season off to a flying start.
They will be competing in the same Group N Mitsubishi Lancer EvolutionX that they drove on the Wyedean, prepared and run by the JRM team, on the one-day event based in Bournemouth. And just like the Wyedean, an early start and full attack will be the order of the day.
While last weekend saw Tom and Craig up against a brace of World Rally Cars and open-class machinery, this year's BRC is based on Group N and Super 2000 specification cars. Therefore, the playing field should be more even but nonetheless, the competition will be just as fierce, if not more so.
The entry list contains no less than 10 GpN cars and a pair of Skoda Fabia S2000s, so it will not be an easy task yet one that Tom is relishing; "I'm raring to go on the Sunseeker. It's a bit of a trip into the unknown again, like the Wyedean but at least this time, we already have one event in the JRM car under our belt and we can make our own notes on the recce.
"We'll also be doing the pre-event shakedown on Thursday, so hopefully that will give us a chance to learn the stage conditions a little and fine-tune the set-up on the car.
"I think that the plan for the weekend has to be the same as the Wyedean - flat out from the word go. The stages are relatively short - the longest is only 10 miles - so a spin or puncture and that could be any chance of a decent result gone, as you'd struggle to get the time back.
"I also think it will be a pretty frantic day - short stages and short services but I'm definitely looking forward to it."
Tom will be running alongside Irish driver Daniel Barry, who is also at the wheel of one of the company's cars. And while Tom won't actually have a pre-event test, he has been asked by JRM to shake-down Barry's car prior to the start of the event, as well as carrying out checks on his own machine.
Joining the BRC for the first time this year, the Sunseeker begins with a shakedown stage on the afternoon of Thursday 24 February followed by the ceremonial start in Poole on Friday evening, the 25th. But the rally itself runs over 11 stages on Saturday 26 February, with a total stage distance of 60 stage miles.
