First Junior win in two years for Creighton and Regan after final stage surge
If the ‘main’ event lacked the excitement and drama expected of a championship showdown, then the Junior BRC contenders added their own brand of sparkle with less than six seconds separating the top two at the close of play.
Northern Ireland’s William Creighton and Liam Regan scored their first Junior BRC win since the Ulster Rally two years ago after a fierce fight with Marty Gallagher and Dean O’sullivan.
Creighton was fastest through the first stage in his Peugeot 208, but a puncture on the second test cost him the lead as he dropped nearly 50 seconds to his rivals. Benefitting from his misfortune, Jordan Hone and Keaton Williams got off to a good start too and were having quite a scrap with James Williams and
Tom Woodburn.
Hone took up the lead in his Opel Adam but after four stages he only had a 1.7second buffer over Williams’s Fiesta R2T. Disaster was just around the corner though, as on the sixth test the Opel smacked a banking on the outside of a slippery right-hander and one stage later Williams was also heartbreakingly out of the running when a hub sheared.
That pitched Gallagher into the category lead but Creighton was on a charge and at the start of the final stage the Peugeot was barely three seconds behind Gallagher’s Fiesta R2T. A blistering run through the 10-mile Black Loch test resulted in a time some seven seconds quicker for Creighton, allowing him to pip Gallagher by 5.8 seconds.
Out of the championship running, Finlay Retson and Richard Crozier were third in their Fiesta R2T, content to get a good finish under their belt after their Ypres and Ulster tumbles.
Meanwhile, Ruairi Bell and Darren Garrod were enduring their own nailbiting quest, much like Matt Edwards. Prior to the event, they were tied on points with Williams for the M-sport and Pirelli Ford Fiesta R2 Trophy. When Williams struck trouble, all they had to do was finish.
With relief etched on his face, Bell pulled into the finish in fourth place knowing that he had clinched the M-sport/pirelli award worth €60,000 towards his venture into the Junior World Rally Championship next year.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” he said. “We set ourselves a target at the start of the year and we’ve achieved it. Now we’ve got Wales Rally GB next month.”
Creighton was delighted too, and not just with the £2,500 cheque from Peugeot UK and Total: “I missed out on the Junior title but at least Liam Regan got the co-drivers’ championship.
“I am just so happy to get the win after an eventful year. When we got the puncture, we thought ‘our luck hasn’t changed’. The fightback showed we could do it. This is for Liam and the rest of the team.”