Paul Alexander and co-driver Mike Panes, secured a fine fifth place overall and second in class on last weekend's Bill Gwynne Motorsport & Rallyschool stages. The event held at the famous mid-Wales rally testing facility of Sweetlamb was just the second outing for the Team Damage Control Mitsubishi Lancer. The team decided to contest the event in order to gain more experience in the new car, and also help represent one of their sponsors, Bill Gywnne Rallyschool International.

Even before the event started however, it seemed that the bad luck that has dogged Paul's season remained, when a pre-event shakedown was abandoned after the clutch expired. At least Paul could see the positive side and he remarked, "I personally think that our luck is changing, as earlier in the year that failure would have happened on stage one and ended our event! At least this way we were able to sort the problem during Friday night and still make the start on Saturday. We were also really fortunate in that Coordsport had a new clutch in stock, and were able to rush one over to Wales for me so quickly. I owe them a great deal of thanks, and also to David Higgins for allowing me to use his workshop to sort the car - otherwise we would probably have packed up and gone home".

The real work however began after the stages started. A first stage overshoot followed by a second stage spin indicated that all was not well inside the ex-Mitsubishi USA Lancer. "The car has an active diff system the like of which I've never driven with before, and I'm really struggling to get to grips it" quipped Paul. "We turned them off for stage 3 and we were immediately quicker - only being beaten by one other competitor - so we now just need to work out whether I need to adjust my driving to suit the diffs, or adjust the diffs to suit my driving!"

Despite having little experience of the venue, Paul and Mike went on to set a number of competitive stage times, and they brought the car home intact - all on one set of tyres! "I can't remember the last time I managed to do an entire event on one set of tyres, but these Yokohama's have been great. As we expected, the USA-spec gearing wasn't really suited to this type of venue - I only used 5th gear once all day - but Mellors Elliot Motorsport are preparing a shorter ratio unit at the moment, so we'll have that installed for our next outing".

The Team Damage Control Mitsubishi is now back in the SRM-Racing workshop and will be re-prepared and cleaned up before appearing at a Rainbow International corporate event on 17th/18th September. It will then be rushed from Rainbow's headquarters back to Wales where the team hope to return to the Sweet Lamb stages on Sunday 19th September.