‘Taylor on top on Tyneside’
Organiser: Alnwick and District and Berwick and District MC When: August 5 Where: Otterburn, Northumberland Championships: North of England Tarmacadam Championship; Scottish Tarmack Championship; SG Petch Stage Rally Championship; HRCR Northern Historic Asphalt Championship Starters: 61 Stages: 12
Peter Taylor and co-driver Andrew Roughead destroyed the opposition on the Tyneside Stages Rally last weekend. The Fiesta WRC crew finished just over two minutes ahead of the field, setting fastest time on all 12 stages and beating the bogey on three of them.
Faced with this explosive onslaught, Rory Young and Alan Cathers were best of the rest, finishing second overall in their Fiesta R5. They were very lucky though, when the car punctured a tyre between stages two and three, or so they thought. When they got out to the change the wheel they found the tyre intact, but a stone jammed between the brake calliper and the inner wheel had cut clean through the rim splitting it in half.
They finished almost a minute clear of the Subaru Impreza of Gordon Morrison and Calum Macpherson, with Morrison left shaking his head and muttering: “Looks like I’ll need to get myself a World Rally Car!”
However the four-wheel-drive brigade didn’t have things all their own way. In glorious sunshine, the Otterburn Ranges looked almost benign offering up unusually dry surfaces and lots of grip. Having swapped his two-litre engine for a 2.5, Ross Brusby scored fourth by 20 seconds from the similar car of Mark Jasper, with John Stone rounding off the top half-dozen in his Fiesta S2500.
“This is my third time here with this car,” said Stone. “And it was nice to get a finish. Heat has always been a problem but we’ve fitted a bigger oil cooler, and also a heat exchanger between the sump and the cooler, which worked well in the heat today.”
Dave Turnbull’s Fiesta WRC was suffering in the heat too. “It’s cutting out in places because it’s getting too hot,” he said, but was forced out of the rally when the centre diff failed on SS4. John Marshall didn’t last much longer retiring his Subaru on SS7 when the prop shaft broke. Another to wilt in the heat was the BMW 318 of George Mackey, forced out after four stages with high temperatures.
Stephen Bethwaite won the 1400 class in his Vauxhall Nova by almost a minute from the Vauxhall Astra of Gina Walker. Stevie Irwin was top 1600 runner in a Nova finishing an impressive 13th overall. Michael Harbour was second in his Citroen C2 but Otterburn veteran Barry Lindsay lost out when his Peugeot 106 left the road at high speed just over a crest into the flying finish on the first stage.
Just 25 seconds separated the top three in Class 3 with George Ross Auld’s Escort holding off the similar car of Robert Marshall. After replacing a broken diff overnight after the Solway Coast Rally, Kenny Moore was third in his two-litre Avenger with the Honda-powered MG Maestro of Ross Mccallum finishing fourth.