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Meeke’s MINI as good as new

Heroics in service restores Northern Irishman’s car to full working order

By Franck Drui

12 November 2011 - 15:22

Kris Meeke will start Saturday afternoon’s three stages with his MINI John Cooper Works WRC restored to full working order after his mechanics performed heroics during midday service in Builth Wells.

Meeke’s car suffered a broken engine mounting on the way to the first stage this morning. It needed a substantial overhaul during the 30-minute halt as Meeke’s rally engineer Teena Gade explained to Wrc.com.

“One of the mounting bars that stops the engine moving was broken so we’ve had a fair bit of work to go through,” said Gade. “It’s fairly deeply buried but as a precaution there were a lot of other thing we changed to be absolutely sure not to send the car out with problems.

“We’ve ended up replacing all the front suspension because it’s quite easy to do as one hit along with the steering rack because that can get some damage as the engine moves. Obviously we’ve replaced the link that was causing us the problem. And because the engine moved we’ve lost some parts in the turbo wastegate system. It’s caused the hot exhaust gases to blow around the engine bay so we’ve ended up melting some components in there. We’ve had some touching up to do on the wiring and the catch tank. We’ve also replaced some exhaust bits we can get to. We’ve also replaced the propshaft because the engine moved so there have been a fair old number of jobs. We didn’t need to change the gearbox and hopefully the car should be as good as new.”

Meeke’s co-driver Paul Nagle said the engine mounting problem had delayed them by half a second per kilometre during the morning loop of three stages. They are currently sixth overall, 5.2s behind Britons Matthew Wilson and Scott Martin.

Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb continues to lead the world championship qualifier, 7.3s clear of Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala. Mads Ostberg is third. In the battle for Production Car World Rally Championship honours Patrik Flodin is comfortable clear of Martin Semerad. Craig Breen leads the WRC Academy Cup but needs to win the remaining three stages today to become champion.