29.08.2007 WINTER RALLY SCHOOL NEWSLETTER FROM JOHN HAUGLAND |
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| WE ARE NOW READY FOR OUR 18TH SEASON We are now ready for our 18th season at the Winter Rally School in Dagali / Geilo in Norway. We will run 4 courses this coming season, and 1 to 1 courses in between. If the conditions are still very good, and there is enough demand, we can run an extra course in the beginning of March. The courses this coming winter will be run with 5 drivers per course. Before we had 6 drivers. This is to get more instruction-time per driver. Because of this, the price is a little bit higher. In our end of season Newsletter after last season, we informed that we would be running 4 drivers next season.This is changed, we will now run with 5 drivers. Be aware that in Dagali where we do our practical driving, we do have very stable winter conditions. Even with the problems of global warming, January and February is always well below 0 C. The ice is thick enough for driving on the lake sometime in December, but this changes from year to year. If the lake is not ready, we use Dagali Airport which is our neighbour. The special-stages are always ready in the beginning of December, with ice and snow surface, even if the snow-banks are not so high. On the last course last winter, in the middle of March, we had water on the surface of the Race-track for one day. We had to move to the stages one day early, but the drivers did get a reduction in price. As you can see, we can now recommend a new ferry connection Immingham- Brevik if you come from the UK or Ireland. But you can of course still use the connection Newcastle-Stavanger. The schedule of sailing for this ferry is not ready when I am writing this, but normally it is 2 times a week but every winter this ferry is in dry-dock in January, and there is no sailing. Since last winter we have been busy running the Peugeot Super Cup, and have been running 1 to 1 courses for some of you in your home country. I also did some training/testing with drivers here in Norway. The last course I had, was in South Africa for Ivar Tollefsen, who drives a Nissan Dakar off-road Rallycar for Nissan SA. This type of Rally car and so rough roads was new to me, I learned a lot, as did Ivar. He won the Rally the following week-end, which was the second round in the World Cup for off-road Rallycars. He is doing the SA Championship to get practice for Dakar next year. He has done Dakar 3 times before. I have also been following some of you, Emma Gilmour had a very bad accident back home in NZ, but she is OK and doing well again in a new car. Domas Butvildas is doing very well in Lithuania and Latvia, Eyvind Brynildsen was doing very well in Rally Bohemia in a S2000 Fiat, leading after stage one, before he retired with broken rear suspension. Shaun is doing very well in the JWRC Citroen Cup, where he is leading. I was taking part in Goodwood Festival of Speed in my Skoda 130 RS. First week-end of September, I will take part in Goodwood Revival in a Lotus Cortina with my friend Arne Berg, who owns the car. Booking starts 1st. September, so for those of you that have planned to come to us, contact us as soon as possible, so we can help you to get space in the course that will suit you the best.
Best
regards |
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