Holiday update and 2020 plans

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And to celebrate, I’m going to talk a bit about the 2019 season and tell you about my plans for 2020.

Summarising this year, I was very happy with the season overall. It was the first time we set out to compete for the Icelandic Championship right from the start of the season and I was very happy with our performance. Ísak Sigfússon, a very good friend from elementry school joined me in the car for the whole season and did a great job dispite his lack of experience. Our team of mechanics had everything under control, we suffered three severe mechanical breakdowns through the season but every time they had the car back in the running soon after, even when we retired from Rally Reykjavik. I've already talked about the opening round of the season here and that one went very well despite the damper failure. The second round in Hólmavik went a lot smoother with no significant mechanical issues for anyone. The surface was very smooth over all and suited our replacement damper pretty well. I was very happy with the whole rally because we managed to beat both Ragnar & Emilía, and Baldur & Heimir on pure pace. Daniel and Ásta were too much for us to handle so we had to make due with second place, but the championship lead non the less heading into Rally Reykjavik.

We started RR with a lot of confidence, we knew that we would lose time on the first day due to the nature of the stages and the suspension we had, the plan was to use the second day to hopefully reel in the leaders. Everything was going according to plan, but early the next day when we were still finding a good rhythm, the rear diff broke. It even happened on the same stage were the gearbox broke the previous year. A rotten bit of luck but thankfully Ragnar Gröndal, who had rolled out of contention that morning sold us his differential so we could get back into the fight. Howevr,Shortly after we suffered another problem that forced us to retire yet again.

People have been speculating on why we didn't restart the next day, because we did indeed have the car ready by the end of the day. The only reason we didn’t was because of me and my lack of support to the team. I was feeling very upset after we retired the second time, then due to a severe water leak. I was feeling very unmotivated and I could not find the strength to pull myself together and keep going, what I needed to do was to motivate the team in these trying times but I was finding it to difficult to motivate even myself. As they say, You live and you learn and I plan on learning from this big mistake. As the saying goes, it’s not over till its over.

And then there was the final round of the championship, that probably deserves it own article but in short, we were feeling pretty unmotivated at the start of the race and planed to just drive steady and pick up a 3’rd place to round out the season. As luck would have it though, we found ourselves leading after the first stage. The newly crowned champions lost a wheel and went no further and Daniel and Ásta lost around 8 minutes with a punctured tire. So after we discovered that our main rivals were not going to be a challenge we decided to use stage two, were the road was smoother and more grippy to put the hammer down and take a confortable stage win and build a good lead that we maintained through the rest of the rally.

It was very important for the moral to finish the season with the win, after getting so close earlier in the season.

As for next year...

Its been difficult before, but we are going to aim for the UK once again. We have the resources and contacts to make it happen, but the mission now is to get together a team of supporters so we can attack the local British rally scene, better known as the BTRDA Championship. We already have a couple of supporters coming in but as we all know it takes a lot more work to compete over seas.

The most important thing is that we believe that we can put together a strong team that can challenge for the title.

I will keep you all updated in the upcoming weeks as the situation developes.