Sunday 26 October 2014

Rally - Weston leads

It's the final round of the 2014 ARR Craib Scottish Rally Championship today and after the first two stages on the Armstrong Galloway Hills Rally, Dave Weston Jnr has taken a six second lead over Jock Armstrong.

The first two stages were dry but it's raining now so conditions are changing. Weston was perfectly happy with his pace in the Melvyn Evans prepped Impreza running in exactly the same trim as it was when he won last weekend's Cambrian Rally. As for Armstrong, he reckons he blew it at the start of SS2: "There was a 10 minute delay when we got there," said Jock, "and I just went off the boil. When the Marshall did the countdown, 5, 4, 3 2, 1 - I was sitting in neutral. That meant I had to wait get it in gear get the revs up and get away, and that knocked my confidence a wee bit through the stage. If we lose by 6 seconds today I've only myself to blame!"

He might only be third but David Bogie is a happy lad: "We've got a deal to run DMack on Rally Wales GB so I'm trying them out today. It's all about finding grip levels. The car is down on power compared to R5+ spec but it's still tricky to find the limits of adhesion on new tyres. I've never tried DMack before."

Desi Henry is top Northern Irish visitor in fourth place in his Evo9 but was cursing (ever so politely): "We got a rear puncture on both those stages, on the same corner too," he said, "it didn't cost us a lot of time but we don't know how we got them. We didn't hit anything."

Dougal Brown is fifth in his Evo9 but admitted to a "near miss' in SS2 on L6 into R6 and Liam Regan rounds off the top six in his Peugeot 206 4WD.

Peter Taylor is 8th in the Fiesta but is struggling with the Notes. He hasn't down the Galloway Hills before and he's more used to making his own Notes so it's all a bit alien. Mike Faulkner lost time on the first stage when a turbo pipe came off on the start line, although he got it fixed for SS2 but "It was me that was off this time!" he said.

Leaderboard after 2 (of 6) stages:
1, D Weston, 17m 40s
2, J Armstrong, 17m 46s
3, D Boigie, 18m 07s
4, D Henry, 18m 28s
5, D Brown, 18m 42s
6, L Regan, 18m 49s
7, D Robertson, 18m 55s
8, P Taylor, 19m 03s
9, M McCulloch, 19m 03s
10, W Sisson, 19m 04s

No comments:

Post a Comment