Friday 14 November 2014

Rally - Mid-Day, Day 1

At Service in Newtown after 4 stages, Ogier leads Latvala by 9.5 secs from Ostberg, Hirvonen and Kris Meeke who is now 52 secs behind the leader including a 10 sec penalty: "It looks like I had a jump start on the first stage - but I have no idea!" said Kris. Elfyn Evans is 7th, 66 secs behind the rally leader.

Top Scot is David Bogie in 21st place in the R5 despite catching a car in SS2, but Euan Thorburn has a 1m 10sec penalty. Don't know why at this point but he had a throttle problem in the Fiesta S2000 when it stuck open in SS2. Pity that, through the 14 mile Hafren Sweet Lamb third test, just 4 seconds covered Bogie, Matthew Wilson and Thorburn. Tony Jardine is 49th but Garry Pearson has dropped back a bit and is 60th in his Peugeot 208 R2, that's 6 minutes behind the works Peugeot of Chris Ingram so we'll need to find out what's up. Jonathan Greer had a rear puncture in SS2 but drove out on it, so Kirsty didn't need to get her hands mucky!

As for the Nationals, Mike Faulkner leads Andrew Gallacher by 35 seconds after 4 stages with Barry Groundwater in third place. Tristan Bailey is now fourth after Ieuan Rowlands got a 1 min penalty which has dropped him a minute and a half behind the leaders. Matthew Robinson rounds off the top six.

Calum MacLeod in the Honda engined MG ZR is going well in 12th place overall and John Morrison is 22nd, but he's got 4 mins worth of penalties otherwise he would have been in the top ten!

There was a cheer from the crowd at the end of the Hafren Sweet Lamb third test when Jim McRae came through in the Firenza Can-Am - right on the tail of a Metro 6R4! No' bad for a man driving a car with all the finesse of a roller-blading elephant on ice. He was holding 23rd place going into the 8 mile test at Maesnant, but so far he hasn't come out!

Geoff Goudie is going well too in the Welsh forests. He was running in the 30s with his Impreza and Graeme Swann, the cricketer, with Stuart Loudon, is still running n his Fiesta R2 as far as we know.

So, an eventful National already. Full roundup later.

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