Rally - Halfway report

Barry Groundwater leads the Brick & Steel Border Counties Rally in his Evo9 but reckons its is quite slippy out there: "The secret, if there is one, is not to be savage on the brakes. If you brake off line, there is grip, but on line there is no grip. It's just polished."

Ten seconds behind is the Evo9 of Milne: "I spun it on the first stage, I was a passenger most of the time but the second stage was better," said Quintin, "I was going slow enough past Jock to shout out the window to see if he was OK!"

In third place is the 2WD Proton of young Oliver Mellors on only his fourth ever rally, but he's dinkled the nose: "No spins, but I've been in two ditches," he said. What he didn't say was that the second time he was n the ditch he was going backwards at the Flying Finish of SS2, hence he ripped off the front bumper - but he got his time!

Dale Robertson is fourth in his Evo9 from the similar car of Steve Petch with David Bogie sixth in the Focus: "I was on  snow tyres and there was no snow in the first stage," said David, "it was terrible, then I switched to gravel tyres for SS2, and it was terrible. We were all over the place again. Another wrong choice."

Mike Faulkner is seventh in his Evo9: "but we did most of the second stage with a punctured rear tyre. Had it been a normal 'gravel' event, the tyre would never have lasted as long, so there was minimal damage."

John McClory is 8th in the Subaru: "There is no enjoyment out there in that," he said, "it's just a matter of trying to stay on the road."

Donnie MacDonald is 9th in his Evo9 with Euan Thorburn 10th in the Focus: "We spun on S2.It was just a second gear corner, but we couldn't get reverse gear. There's something wrong, we had trouble getting the car off the trailer this morning, so just a bit worried about the gearbox."

Jock Armstrong and Alastair Inglis are both off, and stuck, and retired!


Top Ten (provisional after 2 of 4 stages)
1 Barry Groundwater, 20m 01s
2 Quintin Milne, 20m 11s
3 Ollie Mellors, 20m 14s
4 Dale Robertson, 20m 24s
5 Stephen Petch, 20m 30s
6 David Bogie, 20m 39s
7 Mike Faulkner, 20m 51s
8 John McClory, 21m 25s
9 Donnie MacDonald, 21m 25s
10 Euan Thorburn, 21m 28s