After 90 minutes of flat-out driving, the winner’s margin on
the 2015 Mach1 Stages Rally was ONE second. And there’s more. Three RWD cars
filled the first three places.
Going into the last stage, Alistair Inglis in his Lotus
Exige was tied on identical times with Gary Adam in his Mk2 Escort. The
previous 11 stages counted for nothing now, it was down to a simple last stage
shoot-out. Fastest man wins.
At the finish, it seemed to take an age for the time to
trickle through, perhaps because they were checking and re-checking. Then it
was confirmed, Alistair’s Honda powered skateboard had snatched victory by one
tantalising, measly second. How close was that?
In third place was a surprised Ian Woodhouse. He thought Tom
Morris in his Metro 6R4 would fill the final podium placing, but on the last stage,
on a tight left hairpin, the Metro broke a steering arm under heavy braking. He
was out. Still, it was a richly deserved third place as the Woodhouse Mk2 had
to fend off the closing Subarus of Colin Gemmell and Nigel Feeney.
Feeney had got off to a bad start yesterday but after
overnight set-up changes he set about the 54 second gap between himself and
Gemmell, and got it down to 3 seconds.
Rounding off the top six and perhaps one of the drives of
the rally was David Ross in his Nissan powered DAM4100. And this was only his
second tarmac event.
Barry McKenna lost out on a top six finish when the coil cap
came off his Mk2 mid stage and he finished 7th just ahead of Alan
Gardiner in his Mk1. Callum Duffy spent the weekend learning his new car
finishing 9th with Donnie MacDonald completing the top ten. It’s
also worth noting that the top 1600 car finished 11th, David
Coulthard buzzing round the huge airfield expanse in his Citroen C2 R2 like a
hornet with its tail on fire.
(There will be a full report in the on-line rally mag later
in the week)
Leaderboard after 12 (of 12) stages:
1, Alistair Inglis, 90m 34s
2, Gary Adam, 90m 35s
3, Ian Woodhouse, 92m 21s
4, Collin Gemmell, 92m 36s
5, Nigel Feeney, 92m 39s
6, David Ross, 92m 52s
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