This year marked the 30th Anniversary of the Breslau Rallye in Poland, having gained a reputation for the Dakar of Europe, never had there been a better excuse to get out Bad Penny and celebrate by getting muddy with some truly awesome people! With over 350 teams registered to take part, it would be a major event.
Gigglepin Racing was excited to be a part of this milestone event and to experience the epic scenario of immense challenges between man, machine, and nature that it promises.
We participated in the Extreme Class. As an Extreme Racing Team, we know the pain, needs, and expectations of our fellow drivers, and we were ready to put our skills to the test, having won it twice in the past.
The Breslau Rallye is not just about speed, but also about right decision-making. Our Co-Driver (James Ayre) was crucial in navigating the best route and assisting Driver (Jim Marsden) with his strength and stamina. The driver and co-driver had to think carefully, use their experience, trick physics, and sometimes be brutal to succeed.
Poland is located in the heart of Europe, making it an ideal location for gathering teams from all across the continent. The 4x4 routes consist mainly of sand and dirt roads with a few changes in altitude. Starting in Zagan and concluding in Drawsko Pomorskie, the famous military polygon, but in a new location this year, which was a fresh experience.
After having only 3 days grace since returning from the King of France, we were ready to head off again across Europe but with Bad Penny this time in tow for an adventure that we won’t be forgetting for a long time.
We added a new system to the car to bring you Live in-car footage, we have a Starlink that has been modified by Justin at Unique and a StarStream attached to some GoPro’s from our good friend George. The system is new and has had some testing in America, which is a totally different scenario from what we are doing in Europe. We have a lot more trees and water to contend with, and this in itself caused us some connection issues. We did have a lot of problems whilst testing this system, but we are slowly working through these teething issues to bring you a better stream moving forward.
This year’s race has gone fully digital, which means that we were given an IRIS System which is our digital roadbook, our GPS and our Control System. It tells us when to be at the start, when to start and tells us if we are speeding when we are in a speed control zone, it tells us when we need to stop and also where the waypoints are. This kind of technology is amazing and completely deletes the possibility of cheating.
The Prologue was absolutely hilarious, so many teams were getting lost on the third tulip; as we watched in dismay at others driving around in circles trying to get their bearings. We managed to get back on track and finished in third position just behind Jarl-Erik Abram in second and Hardo Mere in first place. We were one of only seven cars to complete the course!
Leg 1 Section 1 & 2 Monday was our first full day of racing. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go to plan. 11km into the race we had an issue with the Orbital Valve, or so we thought, this meant that we lost our steering and had to Iron Man it back to camp. It turned out to be the bearing which had let us down, a part that only costs £4.50 has now cost us DNF in 2 sections and a 10-hour penalty! That is going to be hard to recover from, but you know what, we are here so we are going to push through and to try pull others down a peg or two.
Leg 2 Section 3 saw us starting all the way back in position 25, but we were determined to show everyone what Bad Penny can do. 165km stage, amazing navigation by James, a top speed of around 145km/h with an average of around 60km/h which meant that we were the fastest Extreme Car by over 6 minutes and the fastest car overall. This means that none of the Cross Country cars beat us, who didn’t have to do the extra marsh crossings. Apart from a little bit of an oil leak on the front axle breather, Penny seemed to be in great shape, and to top it off we won the Leg!
Leg 3 Sections 4 & 5 “The Hannibal” saw us starting the race in first position this time as we won Leg 2, what a turnaround and a promising start to the day. We still aren’t winning the race as 10 hours is a lot to make up but it feels great to be leading once again. After the first 75km we changed the alternator and headed off to Drawsko Pomorskie to start the mud and swamps, the start of the real extreme stage. Being mainly sandy tracks in the first section allowed Bad Penny to really push hard, poor James is now about 3 inches shorter. We were going well until we started running into an overheating issue, it turned out to be a bit of rubber that hadn’t been fitted properly that got caught in the fans which was preventing them from turning and cooling efficiently, we got up to about 114C but managed to catch it before we boiled over. With 500km in total, we absolutely smashed it, we won the first stage by about 2 minutes, then the next stage we were beaten by a Polish team in an Estonian Car, and the next stage we had Hardo Mere overtake us at a swamp crossing and although he beat us we still won the Leg as had been faster than him in the previous stage. That means we had now won 2 Legs in a row!
Leg 4 Section 6 was a tough day, 165km in one stage. It was all going well until Hardo Mere past us during a navigation error. He is a monster on the track. Lots of very deep swamp crossings meant that we got completely drenched as we had removed the windscreen to allow better airflow. Not the result we wanted but we had fun and still held up in the top 3 coming in third position. On top of this, it was a very long day for us as we also had the night stage that didn’t start until around midnight.
Leg 4 Section 7 Night Stage went well but we did get stuck in a bog that cost us a couple of minutes coming in second behind Hardo Mere. This event is all about Hardo Mere and his navigator Piotr is smashing it.
Leg 5 Section 8 is a 170km special stage, it’s like driving King of The Hammers. Today when we were out on track; Hardo got stuck on one of the bog holes, we managed to pass him at the back of the Extreme Zone, and we went off into the distance. We decided to go back out today without a windscreen despite bad weather warnings and around an hour and a half into the stage the heavens opened and we had a massive storm. We had a technical issue at one of the waypoints and although we were within 10 metres of it we couldn’t get it to register, which gave Hardo the chance to catch up and get past us. We sat in his dust for around another 20km until his navigator made a mistake and we were able to get past him and stay ahead for another 130km, right near the end in the last 10km we missed a turning that cost us 5 minutes allowing Hardo to get past us, we crossed the finish line and we were 1 min and 12 seconds behind Hardo. With a sudden twist, it appeared that Hardo missed a waypoint and had a 2-minute penalty, so we are the stage winners again! That means that since Monday we have managed to go from position 25 to position 6!
Leg 6 Section 9 is the last stage of the Breslau Rallye, we started in 6th place. We got about 4km into the stage and we lost our alternator, which Jim is a bit mythed about as he rebuilt it himself the night before and we had fluctuating power from that point onwards. We were hunting down all of the Estonian cars, all 4 of them and good old Bad Penny managed to pass three of them on track, but we couldn’t get to Hardo Mere who started 7 minutes ahead of us, but we did beat him on adjusted time, yeh!
So Bad Penny had some issues early on but she is a superstar and delivered once again, she posted the fastest time for any car on course across all the car classes! The vibe, the spirit makes you want to come back time and time again. Surprisingly despite the 10-hour penalty early on we managed to come in 6th place, 19 places higher than we were on Day 1, which is just unbelievable.
We couldn’t have done it without the support of our team and our sponsors, so thank you so much!
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