Kintyre crew’s Ingliston rally burn up
A TAYINLOAN rally navigator’s counting error saw his team slide to 50th in an Ingliston race.
Driver John Kean and co-driver Malcolm McDonald failed to finish their first stab at Dunfermline Car Club’s Blackwood Plant Hire-sponsored event in a perfectly prepared Peugeot 205.
Having shoehorned a Citroen Saxo engine into the 1980s 205, a further improvement for the recent tight-cornered, eight-stage Royal Highland Showground circuit was the addition of power steering.
Although a vast improvement over their previous set-up, it tended to lock up when changing direction quickly.
Apart from this minor niggle the car performed faultlessly – which is more than can be said for the driver and navigator.
A couple of spins and a major trip to the grass didn’t help the stage times but it was Malcolm’s counting mistake that saw the pair drift down the order.
He brought the car off the stage a lap early at the split and merged not once but twice.
This earned two stage maximum times adding nearly six minutes to their overall time – the difference between 39th and 50th place.
More than 80 teams took part in the rally, which was the second round of the Scottish Tarmac Rally Championship.
Dunfermline Car Club’s next rally will be Kintyre’s fourth Mach rally on July 15 and 16 at Machrihanish Airbase.