01/11/2011
Gill Wins BRC Winter Gravel Rally
It was the BRC Winter Gravel Rally at the Black Bess Plantation in St Peter and after a day-long battle during which they were never separated by more than three seconds, Gill won on the final stage, by a margin of 1.44secs.
There were quality battles throughout the field, and only one retirement, despite numerous displays of impressively committed driving from all 15 drivers, eager to end another successful BRC season on a high. The Club’s Competition Secretary Neil Corbin said, “I could not have asked for a better run event, as everything worked like clockwork. Thank you to all marshals who ran this event and all of those that helped the BRC for the entire year! Your assistance is very much appreciated.”
Island fans had been looking forward to the duel between Gill and co-driver Michael Cummins in the Simpson Motors/Shell V-Power/Automotive Art/Chefette Suzuki SX4 WRC and Manning and Derek Edwards in the FG Wilson/ AutoLink/ Garbage Master/ Paints Plus/ Hankook Ford Escort WRC - and they were not disappointed.
Following his victory in the recent Autumn Gravel Sprint at the same venue, Manning was fastest on the opening stage (1m 53.22s, compared with 1m 55.30s), the only one of the eight on which they were separated by more than 2secs. Both improved on stage two, Gill faster this time, by eight-tenths, but two stage wins gave Manning the lunchtime lead by 2.9secs.
With the direction reversed after lunch, three more stage wins for Gill combined with growing tyre degradation for Manning to switch their fortunes; his lead was slowly eroded, to just four-hundredths of a second by the end of stage seven. Gill won the final stage of the day to end the local season with a victory, ideal preparation for Rally Jamaica at the beginning of December.
Afterwards, Gill said: “We started slowly, having not driven at Black Bess since the Suzuki Ignis. We improved as we went on and picked up the pace as we got more comfortable. The course was fabulous and we'd like to see it with some extra next year.”
And it was not just the battle for overall supremacy that kept spectators entertained. Just behind, there was a lively Group N tussle between the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IXs of Geoff Noel and Mark Hamilton, and Andrew Mallalieu in his Subaru Impreza N10. After Hamilton set the fastest class time on stage one, they swapped stage wins back and forth, Hamilton leading by nearly 2secs at lunch. Noel fought back with the first stage win of the afternoon, but again they shared the stage wins, as Hamilton increased his advantage to just under 5secs by the end of the day.
Hamilton said: “We had a good battle trading times with Geoff, and congrats to him on his championship win.” For Noel’s part, he said: “Today we came to confirm the championship, so the aim was to not only have fun, but to finish. There was the extra challenge of Mark and Andrew, but I stuck to the steady approach and it has paid off.”
In the two-wheel-drive classes, there were also some notable performers, including Nigel Reece – he was an impressive ninth overall at lunch in his first gravel event in the ex-Watson brothers Ford Escort Mk I, but a gearbox failure ended his day after stage six.
In SuperModified 11, the Escort’s former pilot Logan Watson finished sixth overall and top two-wheel-drive in the ex-Jonathan Still BMW M3, after a battle for two-wheel-drive supremacy with Modified 6 runners Neil Corbin (Toyota Starlet) and Jamal Brathwaite (Mitsubishi Mirage), each of whom claimed fastest 2wd times. While Corbin won M6, it was not enough to deprive reigning Champion Brathwaite, who finished second, of back-to-back class titles. In Modified 7, the returning Jeremy Sisnett (Ford Fiesta) outgunned John Corbin (Toyota Corolla) to win the class, having started the day separated by just one point.
From the Barbados Advocate.
