Results are not yet final, but it looks as though Mike Faulkner has taken his first outright rally victory since the Scottish Rally two years ago. He finished the 6 stage Merrick Rally over half a minute clear of Robbie Head.
“There was 7 seconds between us going into the last stage,” said Robbie, “but I didn’t want to take any risks – it looks as though Mike did!”
For his part, Mike reckoned he didn’t: “I knew Robbie was close, but I didn’t know whether he would attack or not, so I just kept up my own pace.”
Faulkner’s time at the finish was 42m 13s from Head on 42m 58s, but once again there was a tie for third place and once again it involved Euan Thorburn. He fought back from that turbo problem on the first stage to share equal third with Wayne Sisson who was running without anti-lag to save his knackered head gasket, so they were both in the wars. They shared 44m 00s with Sisson getting the final podium place as he was faster than Thorburn’s afflicted Lancer on the opening stage of the day.
Andrew Gallacher scored his best result of the past two years with fifth (45m 22s) ahead of Jonny Greer who punctured a tyre in the last stage which dropped him out of the top three to finish sixth (45m 32s), but he was well pleased with his pace in the woods ahead of the Trackrod later this month.
Liam Regan was seventh (45m 36s) from Jim Carty (45m 37s), Mark McCulloch (45m 45s) and top 2WD runner in tenth place overall, Peter Taylor with the Renault Clio on 45m 52s.
Taylor would have finished higher up had it not been for Notional Times applied to the latter half of the field on the final stage. This was due to an incident in which a competitor went off. And the stage was blocked.
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