RALLY RESCUE IN RUSHY KNOWE

The Rushy Knowe stage had to be stopped after Jon Ingram put his Ford Focus off the road, whilst the car was relatively unscathed the driver aggravated his neck injury sustained on a previous event and as a precaution, the stage was suspended and the air ambulance called into action. Barry Clark and Lorna Smith sporting stopped to offer assistance and the stage resumed after a 27 minute delay.

There were numerous incidents on the 8 mile stage, and on the following 12 miler in Chirdonhead, the slippery conditions not improved by a heavy shower of hailstones. Mark Higgins excursion cost him some 40 seconds and handed the lead to Paul Bird who maintained he was “Just Cruising” Austin McHale also went off in Rushy Knowe, leaving his car with a nasty vibration, thought be coming from a prop-shaft, Jonny Milner’s Toyota got a puncture just a mile into the stage, he elected to run on it, dropping a minute and getting caught by Richard Gower despite the latter’s Hyundai suffering from gearbox problems.

Higgins was back on the pace on the next stage and regained the lead from Bird but Chirdonhead also saw some carnage, Gareth McHale put his Toyota off briefly, Tapio Laukkanen’s Subaru kept jumping out of 5 th gear and Steve Perez’ exited the stage with transmission problems and the car losing oil. David Higgins Mitsubishi was stuck in 4 th gear, it was pushed away from the stage finish but will have to do the P-Zero stage before service, gearbox problems were also affecting Aaron McHale, his Mitsubishi, having lost 4 th gear. .

Top 10 on Leaderboard : M.Higgins/ B.Thomas, Ford Focus 1.09.12.3, P.Bird/ I.Windress, Ford Focus, 1. 09.16.3, A.McHale, Ford Focus, 1.09.45.3, G.McHale, Toyota, 1.10.16.1, D.Higgins/ D.Barit, Mitsubishi, 1. 10.22.8, S.Ling/ I.Allsop, Hyundai, 1.10.32.9, S.Perez/ N.Dashfield, Hyundai, 1. 10.44.4., T.Laukannen, Subaru 1.10.45.8, R.Gower/ A.Davies, Hyundai, 1.12.02.0, J.Milner/ N.Beech, Toyota 1.12.38.8.