PRESTON CLAIMS A FIRST RALLY WIN ON WALES RALLY GB NATIONAL
Lancashire local spins and wins as new format hurts mitsubishis
Organiser: Wales Rally GB When: October 28/29 Where: Deeside, Flintshire Starters: 74 Stages: 8.
In what went down as a mixed reaction to a newly formatted Wales Rally GB National Rally, Tom Preston took his first overall rally win with Andrew Roughead navigating the CA1 Sport Skoda Fabia R5 to victory.
For 2017 the event had switched back to a two-day format, with Saturday and Sunday’s stages in the offing for crews.
What that did do is have a huge effect on the outcome. The national rally has been won by Mitsubishi Lancer E9s in each of the last three seasons, but this year it was the year of the R5. Bruce Mccombie, last year’s winner and Lancer E9 driver, explains: “It was more slippery than I expected. There’s not enough fast stuff for us, there’s too many hairpins. We need the longer stuff through the windmills. The Friday suited us.”
In recent years the national event has taken in the more flowing stages on the Friday, where the Lancer’s top speed and momentum through the quick corners comes into play. The R5s benefit in the twistier sections where its better handling puts it ahead. It made a huge difference.
Preston got off to a brilliant start. The Lancashire driver went fastest by 10.9s in the first proper gravel stage, after he’d also topped the event opening spectator stage at Cholmondeley Castle. His closest charger initially was Dylan Davies, in a new ex-peter Smith R4-spec Subaru Impreza.
But one stage later, Preston almost threw it away. It was oh-so close. “I went too quick into a left hander, it dug in and I spun and stalled,” he said. “We had to turn around.”
That meant the top four was separated by 7.9s with Davies heading Roger Duckworth and Mccombie. Duckworth was into his first gravel rally since this event last year in his Subaru Impreza WRC car. More importantly it was co-driver Mark Broomfield’s first event since he was airlifted to hospital on the Get It Sideways Stages in 2016.
Their challenge would ultimately become unstuck with a multitude of problems. The ’diff was making such a loud noise, Broomfield described it as “wanting to fire itself out of the side of the car”.
The problem dropped them out of second and into third overnight. Preston had pulled away since his issues and led by 25.1s overnight ahead of Mccombie.
Duckworth went quickest on the second stage of Sunday and proved the ’ diff problem wasn’t hampering performance too much. Adapting to shifting when the light on the dash told him to helped Duckworth cope with the problem. He couldn’t hear the engine to change gear!
Ultimately though, the damage was done and Duckworth wouldn’t reclaim second from Mccombie and Michael Coutts. Neither would the latter overcome the dominant Preston, who didn’t set a fastest time on the final day, but he didn’t need to such was his overnight lead.
The star of Sunday was John Wink with two fastest times in his Hyundai i20 R5. He took fifth overall ahead of Keith Parry’s Impreza.
All in all, the event ran well, and in contrast to recent years, no stages were lost thanks to the dropping of the Friday stages where the tests were particularly tight. The competitors did lament the 90 plus miles of road section for 16 miles of stages on the Sunday, and the loss of the popular Sweet Lamb, Hafren and Myherin stages on the Friday.
“I miss Friday,” said Peugeot 306 driver Alan Desbois. “It started as a two-day event in 2010 but I feel it’s gone backwards now. Previously, we were missing stages on the Friday, but I think there’s other ways around it [than not running Friday’s stages]. It’s now a BTRDA event plus 15 miles. The overheads were the same as we had to travel up Thursday.”
Another competitor added: “There’s no doubt the event is still brilliant, but I think most people would prefer to do at least most of the Friday stages than the Sunday. The road mileage to stage miles isn’t enough on the Sunday. I think some of that will sound like a slant on the organisers but it isn’t. The event was great, but it could have been that bit better.”
So all in all the new national ran well. If it could incorporate some instead of none of Friday’s stages, it could be even better. Unsurprisingly, there was no complaints at the stage end from Preston and Roughead. Job done. There was plenty of talk about Welshman winning the event, but Preston joins Dan Barritt, the overall winning co-driver, as proud Lancashire men.