Bird flies the highest and bags another MN Circuit Rally win
Frank Bird and Jack Morton made it three wins from four in the Motorsport News Circuit Rally Championship at Brands Hatch last weekend.
The pair’s Ford Fiesta Rally2 was fastest on all eight stages and took the win by 1m17s. “It never missed a beat all day and we just had to blow off the early cobwebs after a month out of the car,” said Bird.
The Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 of John Stone and Tom Woodburn was second all day despite using “very worn tyres”. They managed to pull out eight seconds over Cadwell Park winners Neil Roskell/andrew Roughead (Fiesta R5) after two stages.
“We then had a bit of an off on stage three,” Roskell explained, which allowed Ollie O’donovan/ashleigh Morris (Hyundai i20 R5) to share third place.
But O’donovan collected a 10s penalty after hitting a chicane on stage five and then retired a stage later, leaving Roskell clear to complete the podium.
John Griffiths/tom Rogers took fourth in their Fiesta R5, but had the similar car of Andy Scott/laura Connell closing at the end. Josh and Tamsyn Davey (Darrian T90) fought back to complete the top six, ousting the Craig Jones/shaun Layland Fiesta R5 on the final stage of the day.
The closest class battle was in Class B, where Ben and Andrew Wilkinson led all day in their Peugeot 106 Maxi,, despite ending stage three in the tyre wall. By the end, though, Alex Cannon/alan Carfrae (Fiesta R2) had kept the gap to 12s.
Former British Touring Car Championship AMD Tuning team boss Shaun Hollamby was also in action, finishing 49th overall alongside Sion Cunniff in a Mazda MX-5.