Rally - Fernie leads

Ross Fernie leads the Albar Trophy Rally at Kames after 12 of the day’s 16 stages, but Alan Gardiner has gone home.

“It’s an electrical problem,” said Alan, “we had it on the Jim Clark but we thought we had fixed it.

The car just cut out and stopped and wouldn’t re-start. We tried bridging the ECU and taking power direct to the fuel pump, but it still didn’t work.”

With Fernie comfortably in the lead there is just 8 seconds between the MkII of Chris McCallum and the Nova of Blair McCulloch in 2^nd and 3^rd places.

They set identical times on SS7, 8 and 9, and since then, Chris has been one second per stage quicker on the next three. It’s that close.

After this morning’s showers, this afternoon has been sunny, and blustery which has allowed the bigger cars to get their power down better.

Bill Hamilton is fourth in his Opel Kadett from the EVO4 of Graham Bruce and MkII of Guy Lennox.

Alexander Vassallo still leads the Juniors but there is ONE second between Ryan Weston and Harry Marchbank for second place.

So far there has been just one retirement, Alan Gardiner’s Mkl, but there was nearly a second! The one man who knows this track better than  anyone is EACC Chairman and chief stalwart when it comes to maintenance and repairs, Gordon Alexander. Coming off the back straight down the dip and along the finish line, the Nova swapped ends and hit the banking. “I forgot,” said Gordon, “successive cars have gouged a hole on the inside the of the dip and I hit it, instead of trying to avoid it! The car grounded out on the sumpguard and spun me into the banking.”

Fortunately, the commentator spotted this and Gordon’s face is now as red as his suit trying to live down the near-incessant public slagging.

Leaders:

1, Ross Fernie, Subaru, 17m 59s

2, Chris McCallum, MkII, 18m 42s

3, Blair McCulloch, Nova, 18m 50s

4, Bill Hamilton, Kadett, 18m 59s

5, Graham Bruce, EVO4, 19m 01s

6, Guy Lennox, MkII, 19m 05s

7, Kieron O’Kane, Ascona, 19m 05s

8, Gerry Gaffney, EVO3, 19m 08s

9, Alasdair Cunningham, Manta 400, 19m 14s

10, Fergus Gray, Peugeot 206, 20m 12s