Winner of the Colin McRae Rally last year, Euan Thorburn has one aim tomorrow: "We want to win the rally. We can't win the Championship and I'm not interested in second or third. This was my first rally win exactly a year ago, so I want to win it again."
The Focus WRC has been refettled since the Merrick: "We actually had two problems," said Euan, "we fixed the hydraulic leak but when we went to do the final stage it still wasn't right. We switched from the sequential mode to the manual shift and it was working OK but we didn't want to do any serious damage. It turned out the second fault was caused by a 50p washer and a sensor, so we could actually have carried on. Only we didn't know that at the time!"
Mike Faulkner has a hard task if he wants to claim the runner-up position in the Championship tomorrow: "We need to finish in the top four with Euan behind us," said Mike, "I've stopped making plans though. We'll do our own rally tomorrow and see what happens. Stranger things have happened in rallying."
There's a change of car for Dave Weston: "After we left the test on Wednesday I got a call from Melvyn Evans on the way home, " said Dave, "it seems that the S8 developed an electrical problem which was affecting the gearbox. Melvyn didn't want to risk it so he sent up an S11."
The odd thing is, this will be only the second RHD rally car that Dave has ever driven: "I think it might be a bit faster and have more traction," said Dave, "but we'll wait and see what tomorrow brings." After signing-on tonight he went away out to find a quiet stretch of road to try out the Launch Control!
Ian Fraser had a tale to tell at Signing-On: "I'm out with Stephen Baillie tomorrow," he said, "I did the Snowman with him and didn't say anything during the first stage, but at the end I turned to him and asked if it would be OK to say something, and he said OK, so I suggested that he was carrying too much speed into the bends and it was pushing the car wide on to the loose stuff on the outside."
"That's funny," said Stephen, "that's what Mark Higgins told me last week!"
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