BOGIE CLAIMS SRC HONOURS IN MINI
Five-time champion cruises to win on Scottish event. By John Fife
David Bogie and John Rowan appeared on the Scottish Rally Championship season-ending Galloway Hills Rally at the wheel of a Mini JCW WRC for the first time. Yet despite their unfamiliarity with the machine, they simply drove away from the opposition to take victory.
Over a minute behind at the finish was the Subaru Impreza of Jock Armstrong and Cameron Fair, and making their first appearance on the podium this year was the Michael Binnie/claire Mole Mitsubishi Lancer E9 crew in third.
If Bogie’s victory was dominant with five fastest stage times, then Armstrong was an equally impressive runner-up. He set five second-fastest stage times having suffered a puncture on the first test of the day. Thereafter, everyone else was fighting over third.
Initially that fight for third was led by Rory Young and Allan Cathers in their Ford Fiesta R5, third quickest through the day’s tricky opener in Dalbeattie. But only three seconds behind were Binnie and Stephen Petch/michael Wilkinson (Fiesta RS WRC), sharing almost the same time. First time out this year and in a borrowed Fiesta
R5+, instead of his 2018 title-winning Ford Focus WRC01, Andrew Gallacher fell victim to the narrow, slippery conditions. What looked like a ‘safe cut’ turned out to have a hidden danger. It wasn’t a big rock, but big enough to take out a strut, and his rally was run.
In the more open and drier Cairn Edward second stage, it was Petch’s turn to lead the trio, with Binnie only a second adrift and Young now a further three seconds back.
John Wink was just outside this third place scrap but it all went wrong for him on the third stage at Dunharberry. The Hyundai i20 R5 encountered a large rock in the long grass and the impact sheared the bolts securing the top of a front strut and that was him out for the day. The same stage also accounted for the Lancer E10 of Joe Hegarty, which plunged into the undergrowth, and the VW Polo S2000 of Peter Stewart. “It was going fine,” said Stewart,
“and then suddenly, no gears, just a ‘box full of nothing.”
Binnie headed Petch and Young, behind rally leaders Bogie and Armstrong as they stopped for service with just two stages to go.
Watching Binnie ‘on it’ through the final two tests it was hard to believe that he had just spent the past two weeks driving a combine harvester.
But he left Petch and Young trailing in Black Loch before Petch bounced back in a re-run of Cairn Edward – taking six seconds out of the Lancer driver, but not enough to claim the final podium position. Young was fifth quickest on the final stage and blaming himself: “I struggled on the fast stuff today, whether it was the tyres, suspension – or just me!”
Scott Beattie once again raised eyebrows. Second time out in the ex-fred Milne Lancer E8, he and Paul Swinscoe finished sixth overall, although it was trailing a wisp of blue smoke by the finish. “I slowed up in stage three when I saw the smoke,” said Beattie. “But we checked it at service and there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”
Thomas Gray had been holding seventh place until the final test when the Lancer E9 slid off the road, handing the position to a grateful Keith Morris in his similar car. Ian Baumgart was eighth in his Subaru Impreza with Alan Dickson taking ninth ahead of the top two-wheel-drive car, Mark Mcculloch’s Ford Escort Mk2.
Just missing out on the top 10 was the remarkable Toyota Starlet of Shane Mcgirr but as Mcculloch observed: “Shane had two punctures today, otherwise he would have whooped me.”
Apart from a test the previous day, rally winner Bogie’s lack of familiarity with the Mini didn’t hold him back. “It took a wee while to get up to speed this morning. I was thinking more about driving the car than listening to the notes,” he said.
“With these 1.6-litre WRC engines, you have to get them revving to make the car work.” When asked if he was going to keep it: “I don’t know – but I reckon there’s more to come.”