Rally - Bogie in Command

With 3 stages gone from to-day’s five, David Bogie has run away from the field in a wee rally all of his own.  He took 23 seconds out of Euan Thorburn on the first stage of the day and has put more space between himself and the rest of the field over the next two.

“There was a lot of talk at the start about the competition today,” said David, “so instead of a cautious start I decided to have a wee push.” And push he did, with eyebrows shooting up all around at first service. “We had a misfire on the Snowman,” said David, “so we’re trying new mapping to day, it’s not right, but we’ve got another ECU to try out.” This was changed at service and David reckons it’s better and the car is just right.

Euan Thorburn is lying second, but he’s had his troubles: “The Launch button  fell out of the dash on the startline of the first stage,” he said, “and the car stalled. We can’t fix it, so it’s leisurely starts from now on.”

At least his Ford Focus is still running. Young Peter Taylor is out: “The bearing on the propshaft is knackered and it’s causing a bad vibration. It’s nothing we can fix here,” he said.

Third is Jonathan Greer: “I’m just here for a run in the forests,” said Jonny, “I haven’t been out since the Rally of Scotland and my new DS3 arrives tomorrow, so this is just for familiarisation.”

Mike Faulkner’s heroic efforts have paid off with equal third place beside Greer and tribute to the hard work by his team over the past few days: “We started the rebuilt a week past on Tuesday,” said Mike, “and we got the car MOT’d on Wednesday night this week!”

Rory Young is fifth just ahead of Quintin Milne who has replaced his sequential gearbox with a conventional 5 spd dog ‘box after his Snowman troubles. “The sump plug came out on the first stage and lost all the oil,” recalled Quintin, “and we did the next two stages with a dry box because we didn’t know. I’m surprised it last as long as it did!”

Barry Groundwater is 8^th ahead of Jon Burn first time out in the Subaru WRC with John Morrison rounding off the top ten. Stephen Lockhart retired at first service with a broken gearbox.

And if any of you are wondering where Donnie MacDonald is this weekend, keep your eye on the crowd at the F1 GP in Australia in the early hours of tomorrow – and you might just spot him there. He'll be the one with the toorie bunnet!

1 David Bogie, 24m 51s

2 Euan Thorburn, 25m 48s

3 Jonathan Greer, 26m 03s

4 Mike Faulkner,  26m 03s

5 Rory Young, 26m 16s

6 Quintin Milne, 26m 20s

7 John McClory, 26m 24s

8 Barry Groundwater, 26m 24s

9 Jon Burn, 26m 28s

10 John Morrison, 27m 03s