Wyedean Forest Rally

Back into the swing once again with the Wyedean, (which is always the start of the season for us – 27 Wyedean’s for us now). At the front it was the battle of the blue oval cars. Steve Perez & Paul Spooner (Focus WRC ’07) edged into a slender lead after stage 4 with fastest or joint fastest times on each stage. Chasing closest behind them were Hugh Hunter & Andy Marchbank in their ex-Colin McRae Focus WRC, down on the technology stakes by several years. Speech House at 13 miles saw the decisive action of the event as Perez pulled out 23 seconds on Hunter. With only a second separating the two Ford men on the final two stages, victory went to Perez by almost half a minute. Hunter was clear in 2nd with Nik Elsmore & Nige Gardner comfortable in 3rd place in their group N Evo IX.In the 2WD battle it was the post-Historic Escort MkI of David Stokes & Guy Weaver which came home first and 17th overall, also taking the Wyedean Historic rally title. Close behind was the top Silver Star crew Adrian Hetherington & Gary Nolan (Escort MkII) with 3rd 2Wd crew home going to Dick Slaughter & Phil Peak (Escort MkII), who were 2nd in the Historics. Jon Ballinger & Jonny Evans (Manta) were 2nd in the Silver Star with Jay Stanley & Paul Williams (Escort MkII) completing the podium. Third in the Historics went to James Potter & Bob Duck (Escort MkII).

Into the 1400’s and Julian Wilkes & Will Rutherford (Nova) made it two in a row on the ‘Dean but this was no easy win for them. In the morning they had been running down in 5th in the class almost half a minute off the pace of Darren Pinchin & Kaz Watts (Satria) after stage 2. A maximum attack on Speech House saw them go 31 seconds faster than Pinchin, who was 2nd fastest. This gave Wilkes the lead which he didn’t surrender, whilst Pinchin saw Matt Edwards & Sam Collis close in to just a second behind after stage 6. Pinchin held his nerve to finish 2nd with Edwards just 3 seconds behind in 3rd place, as these two took the top spots in the 1400 championship standings.