2010 News...

Yesterday I won my class (BTRDA Rally First Class RF1.4) on the Wyedean Forest Rally beating my nearest rival by 53 seconds.

This is my 1st, 1st, in rallying and it feels great. For winning, I won the Forest of Dean Nicky Grist trophy which is awarded to the Winning BTRDA Rally First Class RF1.4 driver. I also finished 63 overall from the original 163 starters (122 finishers) and 12th out of 51 cars in the overall 1400 class. I started competitive rallying 2 years ago and my 1st Rally was the Wyedean so it was to me it was significant that my 1st class win should come on the same rally.

The rally started and finished in Chepstow and the weather was perfect for rallying and the stages were in really good condition. The actual rally went really well from start to finish. We decided from the off to start fast and finish well which meant we really pushed in the early stages and having had so may disappointments in the later stages in last years championship, we eased of in the last few stages making sure we actually finished. This worked well and we ended up posting the best stage times for our class on 5 stages (of which we tied on 2) out of the 7.

The photos above show us tackling the Serridge 2 Stage on the Wyedean Rally and the second photo the end of a successful day. More photos taken on the rally can be found if you click here Rally Gallery

If you click on the following link you will be able to see Neil Johnson's article in the Lancashire Telegraph and the Motorsport news article looking forward to the new Rally First 2010 Season. You will also find more recent articles by Neil and Motorsport News on my win on the Wyedean.Press coverage.

My Co-Driver for this rally was Joe Cruttenden who Co-drove for me last year. He also won 1st co-driver in the BTRDA Rally First Class RF1.4 and he also won the award for the highest placed Young Co-driver - Michael 'Beef' Park Trophy ('The Bull').

The 1400 VW Lupo I used on this rally was prepared by John Goff and the Rallyschool team (www.rallyschool.co.uk ) based in Shropshire. John was watching me on the first and last stages, initially encouraging me to go quicker and inthe last stage to use my head. This we did and it ended up with this result.

My next event will probably be the Somerset Stages Rally on the 24th April 2010 where I hope I can build on this lead.

Bye for now