Saturday 25 April 2015

Rally - Edwards wins

Going into the final stage of today's DCC Stages, Nigel Feeney had a 2 second lead over Bruce Edwards, but at the end of it, Edwards had a 25 second lead over Feeney!

"I hand braked the car into a bend that was nearly as tight as a hairpin," said Nigel, "and a trailing arm snapped. It was quite a handful finishing the stage with the wheel wobbling around and it made the corners even more interesting!"

At least he hung on to second place as Colin Gemmell finished just 3 seconds behind. He scored his third place helped by Andrew Gallacher's retirement when the Cosworth blew a turbo.

Hamish Kinloch was fifth ahead of Edward Todd, but the day was brought to a premature halt after Stage 7, when a competitor was taken ill and the rally Doctor had to attend. So concerned was the Doc that he said he didn't want to leave the patient and resume his stage readiness position. Given that this was prior to the last stage of the day and the time it would have taken to get an ambulance out from Edinburgh the organisers felt that they had to cancel Stage 8 and bring the day's competition to a close.

Fortunately the competitor recovered sufficiently to forestall the need for the county ambulance to attend and his 'illness' was put down to paint fumes in the car caused by a hot exhaust. Just one of those things, eh?

Earlier in the day, the fifth stage was yellow flagged when a cyclist was spotted in the stage. Turned out, he had been cycling along the fence in the park next door, so although technically not on the stage he was sufficiently close to cause alarm and the Marshals did the sensible thing.

Reigning Scottish Tarmack Champ Paul Ballantyne was another late retirement when the Clio split a steering pipe and lost its fluid, and another top seed, racing driver Charlie Shaw retired in a rather more decisive fashion when a con rod made a bolt for freedom through the side of the cylinder block.

An eventful day all round.

Leaderboard:
1, Bruce Edwards, 51m 24s
2, Nigel Feeney, 51m 49s
3, Colin Gemmell, 51m 52s
4, Stuart Walker, 52m 55s
5, Hamish Kinloch, 53m 07s
6, Edward Todd, 53m 20s
7, Lee Hastings, 53m 21s
8, Stuart Baillie, 53m 28s
9, Jim McDowall, 53m 37s
10, James Gibb, 53m 37s

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