Bad Penny Wins Blidinje Challenge 2024!
Jim Marsden and Team Gigglepin Racing are busy doing what they do best… racing and taking podium finishes! Their latest adventure, in their custom built Spider 9 powered racer, found themselves in Herzegovina which is both a first for Gigglepin Racing and us. Race report, courtesy of Gigglpin, included below (source).
Bosnia here we come! Or so we thought; this trip taught us a lot about Bosnia and Herzegovina and was full of surprises.
Still with a stigma attached from the war which was nearly 30 years ago now we weren’t sure what we were going to encounter. The first thing we discovered after telling everyone that we were going to Bosnia was that in actual fact we weren’t in Bosnia at all, we were is Herzegovina (Hercegovina), which we thought was the same place; but the locals quickly told us it’s like calling a Scotsman English.
This is the first time that we have entered the Blidinje Challenge as it usually falls upon a time that we are racing elsewhere; however, this year they changed the dates and for us the stars aligned as it meant that straight after this event we could travel a few hours North to attempt the Croatia Challenge, another first for us. We love Croatia and with Jim being the only person to win the Croatia Trophy 3 times this was an event we were keen to attend.
The challenge started the moment that we left the Gigglepin workshop, it is over 1300 miles to our destination, that equates to 20 hours continuous driving through 7 countries and across the English Channel, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and finally into Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first day see us setting off at 3.45am before finally arriving at our hotel for the night in Germany at 8.30pm with over 1000 miles covered, a pretty successful first day except for one tyre blowout on the trailer, which with our super speedy pit crew see us back on the road in under 5 minutes.
Day 2 saw another 300-mile journey to Blidinje and what a place, the scenery is just stunning. Tall pine forests, surrounded by mountains, beautiful weather hitting high in the 30’s and some great beer.
It’s not often we get to be tourists, by arriving a day early it gave us the opportunity to be just that! Our amazing hosts arranged for us to be guided to the highest peak in the region sitting at over 2,228m, so we jumped in our trusty Grenadier to take us to the top. Once we got to the top, we reached a military base which is still manned today by two soldiers, who invited us in to share some meat, bread and beer that GaGa our trusty guide had brought with him from his ranch. This was all just so surreal, sitting on top of a mountain, with expansive views, eating cured veal and drinking beer in a military base that still has bullet holes in the scaffold railings from the war, just epic!
Once we had finished being tourists it was time to set about camp, where would we be sleeping tonight, and this is where it gets really interesting. We are used to sleeping in tents, on-site, but this event comes inclusive of hotel rooms, yes, we get an actual bed to sleep in and showers, unbelievable and the cost was included within our entry fee! For such a small event in terms of scale these guys go above and beyond with their hospitality. They had a huge marquee set up with a full stage, lighting, large screen, a bar filled with over 50 bottles of whiskey, dining tables with real cutlery and plates for our meals, and amazing food, a covered area for the toilet facilities, an amazing party night, there wasn’t a thing that they fell short on.
Race Day 1 – Prologue and Night Stage
The first day see’s two stages, the Prologue and the Night Stage. We had a plan in place not to win the Prologue, we like to come in third or fourth on a Prologue as this means that we aren’t the first one out on the tracks for the Road Books, so if someone screws up their navigation it gives us a chance not to do the same thing, we have no issue overtaking them on the road book as then we know that we are definitely in the lead. We encountered some over-heating issues during the Prologue which turned out to be a heavily soiled radiator, the person who was in-charge of cleaning this out after Breslau knows who he is, our eyes are on you! Despite this somehow, we managed to come first in the Prologue, doh.
Prologue:
As we were going through the Road Book for the night stage we noticed a few differences to other road books, there was no total distance and every single obstacle was written down. If you pass a house, its written down, if you go straight ahead at a junction, it’s written down, which sounds great but when the directions are coming so fast it is hard to keep up with them, unless you turn off at a tulip forget the additional information! This did lead to us getting lost shortly after setting off, but we know what we are doing so made the conscious decision to head back to the start and re-set our route. This now put us into 4th position which is really where we didn’t want to be at this stage, that put us about 20 minutes behind the leaders.
Race Day 2 – Road Book 1
We broke a shock absorber; however, our new friend Mario from Milwaukee tools took it to an engineering shop for us so it can be fixed and fitted later on in the day. Our team back at Gigglepin sorted out some new shafts for us to be sent to Croatia for next weeks race at the Croatia Challenge.
We took the windscreen out as it was over 30C, we cut out the tyres to open up the lugs and it made a massive difference. There were some amazing tracks today, amazing rocks, amazing climbs, running on tracks that we really shouldn’t be on with old Bad Penny but she handled it amazingly well. We believed to have come in 4th position but with adjusted time we were expecting 1st.
Whilst we waited for the results to come in it was time to be a tourist again and travel to the capital Mostar, we wanted to see the famous old bridge that everyone jumps off!
Race Day 3 – Road Book 2 and Circuit Race
The results are in and we pulled in a good time yesterday winning the stage, but as we head into the final day, we are still a massive 19 minutes behind the leader. We have two stages today to make up the time, a Road Book in the morning and a Circuit Race in the afternoon, time to turn up the heat. We are currently sitting in second position so it is going to be an interesting day, Harris is an amazing driver and he is definitely keeping us on our toes.
Today’s Road Book had a good start but we got a little bit confused at the first check point and had to come back to re-set, which allowed Harris in second place to get past us. We caught him up on a side slope going down a hill, it was like a side slope of death, so Jim just laid it up against a tree, it’s a good job the tree was there, let’s just say that. We chased Harris into a gulley, which turned into a nightmare gulley, we had to reverse and winch down as it was just a bit too exciting for us. That then led into the gulley of hell to try winching up, with about 8 full length pulls; but after this it was just driving so Wayne got to put his feet up as Jim took over.
There were massive trees with metre high stumps, huge rocks, ridiculously steep climbs which; made it near impossible to hook the winch up, there were loads of logs and water running through, it was just spectacular. We managed to squeeze past Harris a little later and thought we had the best of him before we came across a lorry that was parked across the track, abandoned with its keys still in it. Wayne tried to start the lorry and move it with no success, which might explain why the lorry was there. As we were the first to this issue it was taken into account for adjusted time. We came into a fork in the road and paused for a split second, then to our prevail Harris managed to pass straight past us. We managed to pass him again at the top edge of a rock ledge, Harris had nowhere to go so we tore off past the front of him and never looked back. After the road book we did have a few brake issues, the guys got straight on it to get them fixed for the circuit race in the afternoon.
The circuit race was set off with 3 car heats, we were in the leading heat with Harris but didn’t fancy our chances, with such a short race it was going to be hard to make up the time unless something significant happened. It was an amazing start off the line to the first obstacle which was a load of continuous up and over dirt mounds, we got straight across these and up the steep incline but Harris ran into problems. His car got stuck face first in one of the ditches and he lost all power, he couldn’t re-start his car or operate his winch. His mechanics tried their best to get to the batteries underneath the car but unfortunately didn’t manage to recover in the allocated time and he received maximum time for the circuit.
We managed to finish the heat first which gave us a 5-minute lead going into the last day, which was going to be a technical exam, so lots of winching! We aren’t fans of man-made circuits especially when you are in the middle of some epic forests, however every inch of the 2.5km course was accessible by the spectators which made it a great opportunity to show off how we go head-to-head.
Race Day 4 – Technical Exam
We did some backward winching, some forward winching, we turned the car into a pendulum… but did we do enough to get ahead and stay ahead? It was tough, we know we weren’t as fast as we could be and we had a belt come off half way round. On top of this we broke a tape, oh no, that’s a 5-minute penalty that for some reason they times by three so have a 15-minute penalty. This is enough to knock us out of first place, but Harris hadn’t run yet so it was all down to him whether we held our position. Unfortunately for him, he took out a post! That is a 30-minute penalty which means by our calculations we are in first place!
As the official results came in we had won! We are the Blidinje Challenge Champions of 2024! It is so good to hit the top step again, it’s safe to say it has been a while. We loved this race and the team kicked ass!
We would like to thank the organisers who did an amazing job and were such amazing hosts, the food, accommodation, course and our own special tour guide GaGa were Gold Standard. It wouldn’t have been possible without such a strong team, Jim, Wayne, Michael, Tom and Darren. And we wouldn’t have even got to the event without the support of all of our sponsors, especially Odyssey Batteries who have stuck by us for many years now, so thank you!
