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Old 5 Apr 2005, 11:54 (Ref:1270762)   #9
spook
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 542
spook should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Pete - the Rally Driver

I had the honour of spending a week navigating for Pete in the Jaguar Drivers Club of Australia 1998 Mountain Rally (Mk2 Jaguar). We finished 2nd in class and the highest placed Jaguar. Pete was rapt, his best result ever.

Now a true story from that event. We were late leaving lunch on day four (Yass) due to a technical malfunction (the Jag broke down - "SU" Fuel Pump), and being placed well overall at that time we were both pretty p___d off that our hard earned position was fading away. We decided to forget the open road speed limits (but slowed to the signed limit in towns and at highway crossings) to try and minimise our time lost.

As many of you know Pete had a very bad speech stammer, which often made navigating for him an exercise in forward planning and patience (waiting for the reply/answer), but it mattered nothing to me as he was a legend and I had all week to navigate for him.

During that stage after lunch, I witnessed the most amazing car control and skill first hand from a gifted natural - he never crossed the median line or dropped a wheel off the bitumen. The speeds reached were awesome - but something amazing happened that I will never forget - at speeds over 75MPH, Pete's stammer disappeared, and for around 40 minutes (on and off - we passed a few towns) he gave me a perfectly clear and unbroken (except by my navigation instructions) commentary on driving a Mk2 Jaguar at speed on the open road. Truely a wonderful experience. We left lunch 40 minutes late (Yass), but arrived at the next control (Gunning) only 20 minutes late. I recall we averaged something like 123km/h over the stage via Murrumbateman, Gundaroo, Jerrawa and Dalton (and collected all answers and via point clues en-route).

Until this day the car owner (& Rally Director) did not know what happened that afternoon (but I suspect he thought we might have taken a short cut and bribed the answers from another competitor - but that would have been cheating), now he will find out the truth!

Thanks Pete for that wonderful week in the Jaguar, and all those racing memories at Lakeside and Surfers Paradise in the Mustang.
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