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Writer's pictureDarren Woolway

King of Portugal 2024



We had great expectations for King of Portugal this year, Michael has been working hard on Mistress to try and iron out the issues we have had the last couple of years and it's looking promising. The only thing we didn't count on though is the weather, it was absolutely pouring down and blowing a gale, which is a great advantage for the 6 British teams, the Germans and Belgians that are use to racing in these wet conditions unlike the Portuguese who usually race in the dry.



The journey over was a little rough too, poor Jim picked up a sickness bug which made the ferry crossing unbearable and we are crossing our fingers that he starts to feel better to be able to race. Ines has never been on a ferry before, so the anxiety of being on one set off some sea sickness, that means from Day 1 we are already 2 team members down.


We have a big team with us this year: Jim & Alex in the driving seats, Darren heading up the media coverage, Michael and James from the UK on pits, Ferdinando and Andre from Italy on pits, Thomas and Brian from Malta on Pits, Jen and Ines are taking care of food and welfare, Sam; Jim's son is flying in to help with the mechanics and Jim's mum and dad are flying over for some moral support.


Photos from our journey to Vimioso


We took Mistress out for some testing but due to the awful weather conditions we only managed to do a couple of kilometers before the Marshalls called off the racing for safety reasons (Emanuel Costa decided to drive the course backwards). Despite this the shock testing performed amazingly well and everything else seemed to be working as it should. We needed to give the car a quick wash down as the amount of rain created a lot of mud and we needed to get her looking all shiny ready for the Prologue and the Night Stage in the morning.


How the Prologue works took us a bit to work out...

The Prologue sets up the starting order for the Night Stage but the Prologue times don't add onto the main racing times.


The Night Stage times do count towards the final times, but the Night Stage results determine the starting order for Stage 1 and Stage 2.

Testing Photos


During the Prologue we came in 3rd place, which is exactly where we want to be. We never want to start in 1st place, it gives the opportunity for the cars in front to make the first navigational mistakes, and means that if we manage to catch a car we know our times are better than theirs and we will be winning. We ran a high box around the 6 mile stretch and sat about 2.5s behind the lead car Flavio Aquino of ONOFF Racing, and around 1.5s behind Emanuel Costa.


Prologue


The Night Stage we changed things up a little bit and absolutely smashed it, coming in 1st place followed by Emanuel and then Flavio, leaving about a 5 second gap with the rest of the field. Our new Lazer Lamps light bar lit up everything, it was amazing.


Night Stage Photos


Night Stage GoPro Footage


Stage 1 we head off first, with 4x 38km laps to complete and we have to go down JT's Rock, which we have never done before so it is going to be really tough. We were expecting a start time of around 1pm which should give us 1 hour per lap.


What actually happened is some lovely Portuguese members of the public decided to set up camp the night before in the middle of the race track, that meant that racing in the morning classes was delayed by nearly 2 hours whilst the tracks were cleared. The weather hammered down all morning, turning all the dust to heavy mud and making the rocks muddy; causing cars to start tumbling. The race was stopped twice due to accidents and having to clear them off the track.


The Unlimited Class didn't start racing until 4.30pm, it gets dark around 6.30pm so yes you guessed it the light bars went back onto the car as this day stage was soon to become a second night stage. It was all going well until half way round lap 1 when we lost one of our rear wheel drives, but that wasn't a problem; we headed back into the pits and got a new diff fitted. As we headed back out onto track we managed to get around 300m out before the new diff we fitted failed, it was an autolocker which we aren't keen on but it's all we had.


We completed just 2 laps before the Marshalls closed the race down, the weather plus the dark conditions just made it far too dangerous to continue, this left us finishing Stage1 in 7th place.


Stage 1 Photos


Stage 1 Footage


As we head out for Stage 2 disaster struck, yes that's correct you guessed it, gearbox troubles AGAIN! It makes absolutely no sense, but unless we can get it fixed sharpish there's no way we could compete. The rain is absolutely hammering it down, all the team tried so hard to get it fixed, half the team sheltering those working with brollies.


It just didn't happen so we finished KOP 2024 with a DNS on Stage 2. Once we returned home we found the culprit, part of the wiring loom had received damage, damn electrical gearboxes.


For next year this car is going to be completely stripped, a load of weight is going to come out, any parts we can make mechanical instead of electrical we will and we will be exchanging for parts that are more readily available in Europe so we aren't having to wait on unreliable deliveries from the USA.


Stage 2 Photos


Emanuel Costa smashed 1st place this year followed by Team MS in 2nd and Schmidt in 3rd. An amazing achievement on a really difficult race, well done guys especially as all 3 of you are running one of our Gigglepin Winches ;)



Unlike previous years we decided to spend an extra day in Portugal so we could party the night away at the XX Bar on the last night, every member of the team though had come down with a terrible Ferdi Italian illness; which meant we were all snuggled up in bed earlier than expected. We took a slow drive back to Santander stopping in a Monastery overnight which was just beautiful. A great end to a race season, until next year!

Beautiful Autumn Colours at the Monastery


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