Rally - A ‘trying’ day at Kames

Pollock/Marshall

A very determined Willie Pollock and John Marshall won an exciting Afton Glen Meats Kames Rally in their Ford Escort Mk2 at Muirkirk, finishing just nine seconds clear of Steven and Kirsten Irwin in their 1.6 litre Vauxhall Nova. Third was the Vauxhall Corsa of Ross Pringle and Thomas Purvin but Des Campbell and Cameron Dunn lost out on a podium finish after struggling with clutch problems all day and finally being docked a ten minute penalty. With Pollock winning the big class in his 2.3 Escort, Graeme and Jim Rintoul won Class 3 in their 2 litre Fiesta finishing fourth overall.

Martyn Douglas and Mark Thurley scored the 1400cc class win in their Volkswagen Polo but their winning margin over the MG ZR of James and Ian Wilson was a mere five seconds.

In fact the competition was so fierce during the day that some of the grass won’t need to be cut for a couple more weeks while other patches will need to be reseeded!

Walker/McBride

Thirteen seconds covered the top three in the Junior 1000 event with the Skoda Citigo of Rian Walker and Stuart McBride taking the win by three seconds from the VW Up! of Jack Ryan and Robin Nicolson. Oliver Phillips and Barry Young were third in another Citigo with the Micra of Thomas Milne and Neil Jeffrey doing well to finish fourth out of an excellent field of 17 Junior entries.

With 45 cars entered in the event, this was the biggest rally entry ever run at Kames, thanks be to East Ayrshire Council who had relaxed the Noise Regulation limit for this event. The 7pm curfew therefore enabled the EACC team organisers to run an extra ten cars in their 16 stage programme.

It wasn’t only a packed programme, the public car park overflowed on to the nearby access road although there were also some rather unwelcome visitors on Saturday morning – midges! Bluidy millions of the wee bloodsuckers, no doubt attracted by the unseasonably hospitable weather and the multitude of human flesh on offer.

Provisional results here:

https://sites.google.com/view/scotresults