MN’SMANGOESSLIP SLIDINGAWAY...
Last year’s Junior World Rally champion Nil Solans is sitting alone at a table. He has, quite clearly, been happier. The highlight of his day was driving M-sport’s brand new Ford Fiesta R2 at the Kielce circuit in Poland.
From the point he stepped out of the left-hand seat and back into the freezing morning mist, things started to go downhill. It’s early on a December Tuesday and the all-asphalt track which sits halfway between Krakow and Warsaw is full of ice. He didn’t mind the conditions. He enjoyed himself, lots of handbrake, lots of driftiness.
But now it’s time to get back in the car. On the other side. Next to me. At least one of us is happy to be here.
I try to offer him a reassuring smile. He takes a deep breath and: “Morningit’s-so-slippery-we-need-to-be-veryvery-careful.” OK… Fortunately for him (probably even more for me), we’re using the infield part of the Kielce track, which involves the bottom half of the five-speed Sadev gearbox far more than the top.
While I’m wrestling with the belts, M-sport engineer Marek Lach leans into the car with some fresh input into the conditions. “It’s very slippery out there,” he says. OK, thanks. Finally tied down and ready to fire the Fiesta up, Lach is back.
“So,” he says, “the open hairpin right at the far end of the stage is completely ice. All ice. It’s very, very slippery.” Yep, got that. Shall we go? Lach: “If you feel you would get more of a feeling for the car, we could let Nil drive…”
Searching for some inspiration, I catch the eye of Finnish colleague Miika Wuorela. He’s been outside. He looks cold.
“It’s your Monte test,” he grins. “It’s not too late to impress Malcolm, maybe it could be you and Teemu [Suninen] next year…”
I ask if there’s any sign of the ice melting.
“They’re putting salt down,” Wuorela says, “but, no. There’s a lot of ice there.” Very slippery? “Very slippery,” he shuts the door, with the grim-faced expression of an executioner sending another to meet their maker. The door’s open again. Lach’s back. “We decided to change the mapping a bit,” he says, leaning down to plug a laptop in somewhere beneath my left buttock.
Now happily (happily, try firmly…) ensconced in the right-hand seat it’s time for a word from Solans.
“We don’t need the anti-lag,” he says, “we will run in road mode.” I am here, you know. Finally, full of fear, I back M-sport Poland’s second 2019-specification Fiesta R2 out of the garage and out onto the track. “Cake or Dime?” says Solans. Excuse me? His mouth’s moving, but I can’t hear a thing. I shrug. He shrugs back. Then he gets it and turns the volume up on his mic. “Take your time!” Ah! Understood. Watching a video of my sighting lap, I can absolutely confirm I took my time.
A couple of laps in, a bit of heat into the brakes and things started to work. Clutch only from first to second and, once out of that icy hairpin, on to the straight and up to fourth. Wheelspin in every gear. Nice. Left foot hard onto the brakes and silence. Stalled. Even nicer.
Detailed analysis of this lovely car was, I’m afraid, beyond me. My time aboard the all-new R2 was all about finding grip. And not make an utter pillock of myself. Feeling the front wash away from under you going in and out of corners wasn’t ideal, but even in such compromised conditions the car still gave confidence and feedback.
A couple of times the Fiesta got reasonably out of shape, but was still compliant enough to be brought back under control from angles it was never designed to be driven at.
The power, what little I used of it, was impressive – massively so when you consider the three pistons ahead of me were sweeping just 999 cubic centimetres to deliver 200bhp. And the gearbox was, predictably Sadev lovely. I was enjoying myself. Even Nil seemed to be enjoying himself. So much so that he offered a bit more advice. Turning the volume up again, just to be clear, he said: “Turn this way, we’re finished…”
Probably best. I think he’d seen me eyeing the handbrake and sensed I was about to jump on the happy stick next time around; I’ll be honest, as you read these words, it’s quite possible we might still have been spinning down the road…
Arriving back into the garage, I got a big thumbs up from Lach – a man who looked like he might just have come out from behind his hands.
“How was the seat position?” he asks. “It’s comfortable – like the World Rally Car.”
So focused had I been on keeping the thing out of the trees, I’d completely forgotten to consider the creature comforts from the inside. I’m sure it was lovely though.
Feeling I might have let my engineer down and with little left to offer in terms of debrief – beyond confirmation that it was indeed, very slippery – I went in search of the Pirelli man to compliment him on getting the choice right.
Alberto Ferloni had sent me out on the Sottozero B (that’s the STZ-B to those of us in the know…), basically the softest, most heavily grooved cover this side of a Swedish spike. I asked what it would have been like on a soft wet. It was warming up and I thought this data might prove useful were I ever asked back to this corner of Kielce. Ferloni looked a little bit awkward. “The wet?” he questions, “you want the wet…”
Longish pause, ending with an even more awkward look and a deep breath from him.
“You would need to be a real rally driver,” he says. “To get any heat into a wet, even a soft wet, in these conditions, you would need to really stress the tyre.” Oh. OK. I didn’t need any more stress. I left the wets and went home.
Great car. Great place. Very slippery.