[pepega]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

So, How did you fare in the Goa event?

I did quite alright overall. My times on the first day were quite poor, taking 7-8 minutes on some stages. I was focused on being really careful with the car, and not about being speedy. On the second day, I could speed up a bit more as I was more confident the 4WD operation and the limits of the car, and my times were down in the 3-5 mins range.

I placed 7th out of 9 overall participants. 3rd of 5 overall stock category participants.

Even the "stock" category had folks with 215/75 AT tyres, and I was driving at the same terrain with my HT 195/80 tyres. So the fact that I did better than some folks with 215/75 AT tyres is a win for me.

Here's Mango at the start line of one stage, bone stock:


I finished 7 out of the 8 stages, and that was pretty alright too. The DNF was in one section where I couldn't climb up a steep mount in reverse. I took a pretty poor line and knocked over a bollard. This was in the winching stage, and I was cooked in the heat long before I got into the car. Here's a video of me DNF-ing:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QxmJKY9-H8w?feature=share

There are other videos of my special stages attempts on the same Youtube channel. I haven't finished editing all the footage I have and work has gotten in the way, so hopefully, I'll get to make a proper post about my experience by this weekend.

I am not sold on AT tyres just yet, considering the stock Nylon tyres are so capable in dry conditions. In wet and mucky conditions, they'll get jammed a lot more, but I won't switch to ATs just yet, without knowing what all these tyres are capable of. Let me get stuck a few times in monsoon, and then I'll consider it.