England’s rally competition is what the real thing — 37 days, 14,000 km, Peking to Paris — is built on, so even in three days here the goal was to properly master it.

The day two report is here.

The record of a motorsport woman driving a life: the challenge to 14,000 km, Peking to Paris
26.06.2022
England, the Summer Trial — day 2: how the British compete
/competition
One reason I entered the Summer Trial rally, organised by the Peking to Paris organisers, was to learn the competition itself. England’s rules are distinctive, unlike anything I had met in a rally before, so the route book handed out on the day was full of things I could not follow. There is a map, but even if you get lost, using your phone is against the rules and costs you a penalty. Day two, and I started fired up again, to review yesterday and fix what had gone wrong. English competition is built mainly out of three parts. The first is called a Test …

Trying my hardest and still not getting results, plenty of impatience and muttering — all of it caught on the dash cam, unfortunately.

I am always the positive one, but the competition itself was a mess, one wrong turn after another, always running last — and even so, I decided to think of it as pressing forward without giving up, and aimed simply to finish this time.

England is often said to have no good food, but this rally was full of home-made-looking, delicious sweets. The meat pie on day three was so good I took one to go!

There was circuit driving too, and the 1929 challenge car, the Buick, ran beautifully. Working towards Peking to Paris, we kept careful watch ourselves on water temperature, oil and fuel range as we went.

And — 1,400 km of test driving, finished safely!

Being my first time, the competition itself was a mess, but finishing comes first in a rally, and we set straight to careful preparation for the next warm-up event.

A trophy abroad is still a distant dream, but one day, without fail!

I did not come away with a trophy this time, but what made me happy was an English couple I shared the prize-giving lunch with telling me, “that’s the smile award.”

I have zero language ability, and still a smile carries. Representing Japan, I will drive the world with a smile.

Mixing with people from abroad also means sharing rally information you would never get in Japan as a privilege — someone told me about a rally in Iceland that is meant to be wonderful, and we swapped emails.

Looking forward to meeting again.