What a brilliant rally. We finished 1st in Group N and 4th Overall after 2 brilliant days of rallying on very fast and enjoyable stages and after some very hair-raising moments. We scored maximum Evo Challenge points on both days, so we couldn’t have asked for a better start to the Championship.

Saturday started well as we were 2nd fastest to Liam McCarthy on the first stage, but on the second stage I had an overshoot into a field as I missed my braking point into a Square Left after turning on the wipers to clear the windscreen and they smearing it instead. We weren’t too long in the field but we knocked a pipe off the turbo and had to do the rest of the stage without any turbo boost so we dropped nearly 2 minutes. We got it sorted in service and went on to set the fastest times on stages 3 and 4. We had a good clean run through stage 5 but in stage 6 it all very nearly went horribly wrong. We had a spin in fifth gear and we were very lucky not to hit anything because at the speed we were doing at the time there would have been a lot of damage done. We dropped close to another 2 minutes as I had blocked the road, Greg had to get out and try to warn the next car as they would have crashed straight into us, but just before it came I got the car started again and got in off the road. We finished off the day with a steady run through the last 2 stages, but not completely without any dramas, as the pipe came off the turbo (after I had damaged it in my earlier off road excursion )   about 1.5 miles from the end of the last stage we dropped a bit of time again.

We had a brilliant day Sunday, as we had a good clean trouble free day driving at a good fast pace without taking any big risks. We had 4 fastest stage times during the day and we were the fastest car on the stages on the day.

Overall, I had really enjoyable rally and only for the time lost on Saturday the overall result might have been better but that is just the way it goes. Finally, I would like to congratulate Liam McCarthy on a brilliant win.