Rally - Taylor Wins

Peter Taylor and Andrew Roughhead scored only their second outright rally victory when they won today’s Turnbull Trophy Rally. At the start of the penultimate stage they were 3 seconds behind the rally leader, Michael Glendinning, but half way round the 13.2 mile test, the Subaru slowed and pulled off to the side of the road. The gearbox had failed.

Going into the final stage, Taylor was still unable to relax. “We had a misfire in the second last stage and we didn’t know whether it was electrical or fuel surge, so we filled the tank and crossed our fingers,” he said afterwards.

Howard Chopping was pleased with second place and Lyndon Barton was delighted with third overall, third time out in his new Escort. Pete Gibson moved up to fourth place while Colin Gemmell hung on to fifth and finished top Scot just ahead of Ross Fernie and Stuart Walker who moved up to 7^th after he found the cause of his lack of pace: “We took the back box off for the final two stages,” said Stuart, “it was blocked almost solid. Earlier on I wondered if it was just me because we couldn’t find anything wrong with the car, so I’m quite relieved.”

Leaders after SS6:

1 Peter Taylor. Renault Clio, 1h 34m 47s

2 Howard Chopping, Subaru, 1h 36m 54s

3 Lyndon Barton, Escort, 1h 37m 13s

4 Pete Gibson, Mitsubishi, 1h 37m 34s

5 Colin Gemmell, Subaru, 1h 37m 53s

6 Ross Fernie, Subaru, 1h 38m 25s

7 Stuart Walker, Mitsubishi, 1h 39m 11s

8 Michael Pickles, Subaru, 1h 39m 25s

9 Derek Blyth, Subaru, 1h 40m 42s

10 Jon Olds, Nissan Pulsar, 1h 41m 52s