Surprise 4th on the Kingsmead

The Kingsmead Finance Stages threw up a surprise 4th place for George Collister and Manx Motorsport Youth Trust supported Rob Fagg.   Competing in the Motivation Engineering backed Escort MKII, the pair believed they would struggle on the event with its high-speed nature and the competition they had to contend with.    
 
It was not long into the event that they were very lucky not to crash out.   Mid-way through stage 2 (Cringle 1), on probably the fastest section of the entire rally the rear wheels broke traction on the shiny tarmac as they rounded the high speed corner at around 100mph.   This causing the car to slide towards the edge of the road and as George tried to correct the slide the car entered a tank slapper.   After what seemed like an eternity he managed to get under control and they reached the end of the stage with both members thinking how lucky they had been to still be in the event. 
 
The first two stages would be repeated twice more to make up the next four stages.   A repeat of stage 2 proved to be another lucky escape for them as the cars rear end again broke traction under braking for the bale chicane resulting in the car going sideways in the bales and facing the wrong way down the stage, the spin costing them around 15 seconds on the stage.

As the event went on a battle with championship sponsor Davey Craine was on the cards until he suffered a puncture and stopped to change it in stage costing him valuable time and putting an end to his challenge.   With the changing weather conditions and a gap of one minute from 4th placeman Steve Quine and a controllable cushion over the chasing Peter Christian it was decided to settle for 5th and monitor the times to the finish.

On what was to prove to be the penultimate stage, rally leader Shaun Fox retired with a loss of oil pressure allowing George and Rob to inherit 4th place with everyone moving up one place.  

Nigel Cannell led the field home in the ex-works Corsa followed by Russell Millward (Lancer Evo 6) and Steve Quine (Vauxhall Astra) rounding out the top 3.   George and Rob colleted first in class and were more than happy with there result, a follow up to there third place on the previous round the Duke Stages.

George has now moved into 6th place in the driver’s championship, mathematically he can take the runners-up stop but more realistically he is looking at taking third.   He also needs just to finish ahead of main Class D rival Jasper Kirkpatrick on the final round to take the class honours.

The weekends result has left Rob just one point behind series leader Ian Baillie in the Co-drivers championship.   It will now go down to the wire, the final round the Christmas Stages on the 27th December.   If he does not managed to secure this title he will have the comfort of knowing he has already secured the Class D title.

Thanks for continued support goes to: Motivation Engineering, Manx Motorsport Youth Trust, Q & S Motors, Integrated Capabilities, Reynolds and Turner, Aon (IOM) Ltd, Sign and Design, Manx.net, Manx Telecom, 4WD & Van Centre, Cronk Aashen Farm Campsite, Tim Shearman, www.rallycodriver.co.uk

Co-ordinator
RF Motorsport
27/10/03

 


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 21/10/2003 - Looking forward to Kingsmead

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