Team Saluki Desert Challenge 2008

[TeamSaluki]

D-Day -1 : Look out, Look out there's a Saluki about.

Yes folks, It's been a year since you last heard about the ups, downs and roll-overs of Team Saluki in last years Desert Challenge. Well the time has come again to keep you informed on how the team performs in this years, our eleventh UAE Desert Challenge which is the final round of the FIA World Cup for cross country rallies.

For those that don't know; We're competing in a two wheel drive, 3.5 Litre V6 VTEC Honda powered buggy built by Fast & Speed based in Holland.

Castrol EDGE, Serck Services, Gulf Agency Company (GAC) and Trading Enterprises (Honda) have made this years challenge possible for Team Saluki - Our grateful thanks go out to our sponsors.

The dog makes an entrance


Yesterday was documentation where we sign on, pay the money to enter and in return we get some stickers and some equipment to install. You would have thought with the fast paced action of the challenge that this would have been a rather simple task. It seems fast paced doesn't apply when you add bureaucracy and administration. 4, yes 4 hours were wasted standing about waiting like someone at the deli-counter for your number to be called. Not a good start to the rally, lets hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Pick a Dirham, any Dirham !


Today we've been down to scrutineering where the Saluki got a clean bill of health from a safety and readiness basis. Our allocated slot of 2pm again turned into an administration fiasco yet again. Realistically we should have been in and out in about an hour, 2-1/2 hours later we finally get out ready to race.

Looks like Paul and his chauffeur Mark had better get used to having cameras in their face if the scrutineering is anything to go by.

No comment !!


This year supporting Team Saluki we have a compact but focused crew.

James - Service Manager
Martin - Service
Rick - Spanner monkey
Leno - Spanner monkey
Tracie - Media Witch-(Whipping the TV crews into shape)
Craig - Technical communications
Keith - International updates


Oh yes - and there's a couple of guys along for the ride - Paul the co-pilot and Mark the driver who's job it is to chauffeur Paul about in the dunes for the next six days.

Also joining us this year we have Simon who is out to cover the team for a magazine and we also have two TV crews (Thomson Grass Valley and City7) who are out covering Team Saluki so our coverage this year should be exceptional.

It's the prologue tomorrow which is being held at a Motocross circuit which should be interesting. We're all looking forward to it.


Regards
Team Saluki

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[TeamSaluki]

Latest news;

October 26th - Back in Black

It's the day of the prologue which this year instead of some scrub land is taking place on the Jebel Ali Moto-Cross track.

Tight twisty turns and lots of bumps meant an interesting course - especially for something like the Saluki and it's slightly wider wheel base. Lots of people were having problems with a particular corner in-between a couple of the jumps and the Saluki was no exception. Finding themselves running wide, the guys opted to run over the mound that was causing them problem and decided to run through a section of the course they had already completed. Coming into the same corner the second time around it was straight through this time no problems. The rest of the run was completed without problems.

Not at the problem corner


This additional section of the course that the guys completed twice meant that they travelled further than anyone else in the prologue taking them to 36th place out of 37 cars. Not really a problem as tomorrow will be a cracking day as the guys have 35 other entrants to set their sights on to hunt down and pass. If ever there was a target - tomorrow's the day.

The sun has obviously been playing tricks with some of the supporting crew from the Challenge and especially a member of the forward sweep team - Streaky (for that is his name) has taken to protecting his skin with some novel attachments for his sunglasses. Elvis is alive and well and working in Dubai.

Uh uh uh


To keep the team motivated before we leave for the desert tomorrow morning we've tried a multitude of things with varying success but you should have seen the effort put in when we had some "rev-head" Australian visitors to the Kennel last night. They came bearing gifts in the manner of home made chocolate fudge. Absolutely divine it was. We had a second shipment dropped off this morning to keep us going - Many thanks Lynn and Brian.

Mmmm scrummy


The team have just came back from the prologue, it's late at night here and it's an "Oh my God what time is it" start tomorrow morning. Wheels will be moving by 5:15 for some of us who have to pick up camera crews etc and off to the Emirates Palace Hotel for the ceremonial start.

We will of course keep you posted on our progress but I fear enthusiasm may drop because the fudge will be finished by then.

You can also reply to this post and send the Team words of encouragement, abuse or whatever takes your fancy. I'll make sure they see it in the camp each evening.

Regards
Team Saluki

[troyharper]

Best of luck to your team!

ps that fudge looks GREAT

[crazyeye]

Looks like fun, wish I had the money to do it.
P.S Go faster next in the next stage 36 of 37 cars SLOWPOKES!!!LOL!!!!!

[TeamSaluki]

Thanks guys! The fudge Is great!


If you want to keep right up to date with whats going on, theres a live tracking system running again this year, find it at:

http://tracking.iritrack.com/e-viewe...rtchallenge08/

[spalind]

Awesome!! Thanks for the updates!!

[Lance T]

Keep us updated.

[TeamSaluki]

October 27th - It's Deja Vu all over again.

Well the "Oh my god" early morning was not as bad as expected with everyone up and about by 5am and on the road by 5:15. Last minute additions as always made it into the cars - some reheated coffee and a pile of scooby-snacks were considered essential to the upkeep of the teams enthusiasm.

A shortish drive to Abu Dhabi to the Emirates Palace Hotel where the ceremonial start was to take place. Leaving the start line almost last meant that the guys had targets to pick off during the day.



It's obvious that we don't like Mondays - our plan to have people dispersed throughout the route failed at the first hurdle - a minor problem that we easily overcame and we were soon on our way to the correct locations throughout the route.

By the time the Saluki had made it to PC1 it was flying and the guys had been picking off their targets as they scythed their way through the competitors.




However at PC1 the guys were to become bogged down in deep sand that was created by a couple of trucks that had came through the PC just prior to the Saluki's arrival. This cost approximately 10 minutes delay whilst they extracted themselves from their predicament.

Annoyingly just prior to their arrival at the next PC it seems that the engine thought that it would throw a spanner in the works and started misfiring. The guys got out and put their spanner monkey heads on - and diagnosed that one of the spark plugs wasn't quite right - the contacts had joined. A quick fettle with the plug - a start of the car and it's confirmed that alls well again. A short while later - a large puff of blue smoke in the cabin and sudden loss of power meant that the Saluki wasn't going anywhere fast. Calls went out to the team (who by now had congregated at two pre-scheduled locations as per our plan) and the Saluki arrived at the Service Area to be trailered back to the bivouvac for further investigation. Current thoughts are being discussed whilst the main spanner monkeys get their food as we believe it will be a late night.

Of course, once we find out what the root cause is we'll tell you. Until then - we're settling in to our portakabin accommodation which is the Saluki equivalent of the Emirates Palace hotel - certainly compared to last year when we all slept on the floor. Any resemblance the bunks have to a good war prison camp is purely coincidental (well that's what they tell us anyway).

[crazyeye]

Any idea when we might see some footage of the race?

[TeamSaluki]

Might have time to get some video together sooner than we thought....

Team Saluki : October 28th : The dogs been to the vets for an injection and it's not good news.

We don't know how to say this so we'll just say it as it is. The dog is dead.

Following on from yesterdays problem, the investigation last night by the spanner monkeys revealed that a piston had decided to melt which caused a catastrophic failure of the engine. The end result is that Team Saluki are out of the challenge for this year since we can't change the engine according to the rules of the FIA.

If you don't understand the workings of the internal combustion engine let Team Saluki explain faulty pistons to you and why they can dash your hopes in this years challenge. The piston goes up and there's a bang, the piston goes down again causing your wheels to go round. The centre piston in the picture below obviously didn't like doing this repetitive task which has caused the disintegration and breakdown of the normally smooth piston face. The result - one dead car.

To paraphrase Monty Python - This one is an ex-piston, it has gone to meet it's maker, it has parted this world.
Dead as a Dodo



The mood last night in the camp was strange - we knew we couldn't continue - we knew a lot of effort had been put into this once a year event - what could we do. We didn't want to upsticks and leave the bivouvac so we've opted to remain in the desert and follow the race. Mark, now that his duties as a chauffeur have been curtailed has been asked to provide commentary on the race to the film crews who were following Team Saluki.


As mentioned briefly last night - the campsite compared to previous years is an oasis in the middle of the desert. We've got air-conditioning in our 4 to a room cabins as well as the comfort of our own dedicated shower and toilet block. All of this has kindly been supplied by Byrne. You can see in the background of the photo's the type of tents we were used to in previous years.

Camp Saluki


Even though we're down and out from the race it doesn't stop us assisting other competitors to remain in it. People know the Saluki and they know what it's capable of. With the high amount of dropouts today through high temperatures in the engine coolant or through oil temperatures getting too high we've been asked to provide both Water Wetter which has been supplied to us by Serck and Castrol EDGE oil to assist other competitors to remain in the race and cope with the high temperatures.

Paul, the co-driver, today assisted another competitor who's own co-pilot suffered a nasty accident yesterday. They wanted to complete a shakedown of the car following the rally route for today. Not long into the stage that cars engine blew up, providing a worse problem than the Saluki suffered yesterday - the car's dead and is still located in the desert. Anyone would think that Paul had a jinx when it comes to enginers! - We wonder if he'll be riding with anyone tomorrow ?




Regards
Team Saluki