2009 News...

Yesterdays Woodpecker Stages Rally was the penultimate rally in the BTRDA Rally First 1.4 Championship, and I finished 4th in class. I also finished 91st in the overall classification, with 154 crews starting the event and 118 finishing. The rally was based at Ludlow in Shropshire and used the nearby stage of Haye Park and the classic Radnor stage.

It has been a long gap since the last rally and although suffering from a cold I was determined to have a good rally. We had a minor spin on the 1st stage which cost us a few seconds, but it became clear early on that we were going to have a fight on our hands if we were to do well. For some reason we didn't have the pace of most of our competitors and we couldn't understand why. On the 2nd to last stage we had our usual puncture, which cost us over 20 seconds, but we managed to drive out of the stage on the flat. We then changed the wheel and carried on to the end of the rally. We thought we had done so badly we were out of contention for the various championships we are entered in, but luck was on our side, with 2 of our main contenders faring worse than ourselves by not finishing the rally in the last 2 stages.

Yesterdays result keeps me in contention for 2nd place in the Rally First RF1.4 Drivers championship, but 2nd place on the rally for David Bennett/Alistair McNeil (Vauxhall Corsa) was enough to give him the 2009 title. I still lead the BTRDA under 25's and BTRDA Junior championships and these championships should be decided on the Cambrian Rally in October.

The photos above show Matt tackling the High Vinnels and Hate Park Stages on the Woodpecker Rally 2009. More photos can be found if you click here Rally Gallery

Thanks as usual to Joe Cruttenden for being my Co-Driver for the rally and also thanks to John Goff and the Rallyschool team who prepared the car for the event.

If you click on the following link you will be able to see Neil Johnson's article on our Woodpecker rally experiences. Press coverage.

My next rally will be the last round of the 2009 BTRDA Rally First Championship, the Cambrian Rally, on the 17th October. The Cambrian is another new event for me and it uses the famous welsh forests of Clocaenog and Penmachno, both used previously in the RAC Rally. The rally starts and finishes at its base at Llandudno.

Cheers