ROWE AND LUND GO ISLAND HOPPING FOR A COMEBACK RALLY TRIUMPH
Andy Rowe and co-driver Cat Lund scored an emphatic victory by 2m32s over Darren and James Matthews’s Subaru Impreza, as rallying returned to the Isle of Wight after a 30-year gap.
Early on, the Mitsubishi Lancer E2 pairing battled for the lead with number one seeds, Wug Utting and Bob Stokoe. The rivalry lasted until SS3 when Utting’s Subaru Impreza lost a wheel and retired. From then on, Rowe used his first-on-the-road position to full advantage. Avoiding dust kicked up from the dry farm tracks surface, he set four fastest times in a row to pull away from his pursuers.
Matthews, second, pushed hard all day to stay ahead of thirdplaced Adam Midghall (Ford Fiesta Rally4). Running without his front bumper, which tore off over a bump on SS1, Matthews lost visibility in the dust several times. However, he went second overall fastest on SS5 to consolidate runner-up spot.
Midghall’s state-of-the-art
Fiesta coped superbly with the bumpy stages, allowing him to pressure Matthews and outpace Tony Williams’s Ford Escort RS by 13s. The one-litre, turbocharged Fiesta took a brace of second and third overall fastest times in the mid-rally stages to settle the issue of the remaining podium place.
Results
Organiser: Isle of Wight Car Club. When: August 21. Where: Palmer’s Farm, Wootton, Isle of Wight. Championships: none. Starters: 27. Stages: six.
1 Andy Rowe/Cat Lund (Mitsubishi Lancer E2) 50m47s; 2 Darren Matthews/ James Matthews (Subaru Impreza) +2m32s; 3 Adam Midghall/Thomas Pidden (Ford Fiesta Rally4); 4 Tony Williams/Tony Gill (Ford Escort RS); 5
Peter Hinton/Dean Mitchell (Ford Escort RS2000); 6 Wayne Hole/Chris Wilson (Ford Focus); 7 David Ley/Neville Hudd (Peugeot 205 GTi); 8 Graham Palmer/ Mike Webb (Ford Escort Mk1); 9 Jonathan Barrett/Gerald Wilby (Subaru Impreza); 10 Kevin Hall/Sarah Hall (Ford Escort Mk2).
Class winners: Kevin Richardson/Katrin Herold (Austin Mini); Ley/Hudd; Midghall/Pidden; Eddie Gale/Rhys Williams (Escort Mk2); Matthews/ Matthews; Hinton/Mitchell.