PEREZ PUTS PORSCHE BACK INTO THE BRITISH RALLYING SPOTLIGHT
With a classy performance across slippery and fast gravel stages, Seb Perez threw a Porsche hat into the ring of the 2024 British Historic Rally Championship. Perez and Gary McElhinney fought a day-long battle with Joe Price and Chris Brooks and finally got the verdict after a nip-and-tuck contest.
This was a challenging day for the historic crews, with 62 stage miles and around 10 hours in the car. Slippery stages, ever-changing weather and thick low cloud were all part of the deal for round three of the BHRC, the final gravel rally before a mid-term run of three asphalt rallies.
With one eye firmly on BHRC points, early championship leaders Nick Elliott and Dave Price set the pace in the opening Sarnau stage to give the Fiat 131 an immediate six-second lead. However, early in the second test in Tarennig, Elliott was out after the Fiat slid wide and got beached. With no spectators about, his rally was over inside seven miles.
Instead, Perez and Price moved to the top of the pecking order and it was very close as they traded times across the rest of the morning loop. By the time they arrived at service in Builth Wells, Perez led by just 1.9s. Price clawed that back in the second run of Sarnau to move just 0.2s ahead and then hurled the Escort over the long Myherin stage. However, the fast-and- flowing stage was Porsche territory and
Perez went 4.2s faster to take a four-second lead into the deciding Hafren stage.
After more than 13 minutes on the limit in Hafren, Perez stopped the clocks just one second faster to seal his victory by five seconds.
It was the conclusion of a battle that neither deserved to lose. While the result catapulted Perez into contention in the BHRC points, the non-registered
Price once again showed off his impressive blend of commitment and car control.
Perez said: “That was hard work! [There were] challenging conditions: very wet and muddy in places and super dry in places. But it’s been a good day and finally we’ve had some luck with the car.”
Price had given his all but had been battling a general lack of grip. “That was a very hard day’s rallying in all sorts of conditions,” he explained.
One of the drives of the rally came from Mark Higgins and Phil Pugh in the David Appleby Engineering Triumph TR7 V8, which just gets better and better with every outing. Higgins tempted Pugh out of retirement for the day and they flew, despite some brake issues. On the final Hafren stage they were eight seconds quicker than everyone with a performance that really put a marker down for this fast-emerging project. Higgins was quick all day as he attacked in the growling V8 and was less than half a second per mile down on the Porsche across the day.
The TR7 result also meant that, for the second rally in a row, the overall BHRC podium featured only one Ford Escort Mk2. In this instance, it was the car of Northern Irishman Adrian Hetherington and local co-driver Dan Petrie who was stepping in for regular co-driver Ronan O’Neill. They were 27s down on Higgins at the finish. “Some stages were tight and very mucky but we had no real problems and scored some good points,” said Hetherington who duly took over from Elliott at the head of the BHRC points’ table.
Ford Escorts filled the rest of the overall historic top 10 and
Richard Hill and Patrick Cooper were fifth for their best result since rejoining the BHRC for 2024. However, Hill was frustrated to be red flagged in Hafren for an incident that seemed to involve a car running well ahead of him on the road.
“Brilliant! We’ve had dramas all day but we haven’t hit anything,” said Dan Mennell after bagging sixth with Richard Wise on the notes. They were just a second and a half adrift of Hill and half a minute up on Rudi Lancaster and Guy Weaver. Paul
Thompson/Josh Davison and Mike Simpson/Dale Gibbons were closely matched in eighth and ninth but James Lepley’s 2024 luck did not improve as his Escort Mk2 struggled with a misfire all day and left Lepley and Simon Jones down in 10th.
Notable among very few retirements were more quick Escorts of Robert Gough/
Jez Rogers and Michael McDaid/Harry Stubbs while Craig Jones and Ian Taylor retired their rebuilt Escort Mk1 with one stage to go with a range of issues.