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CUB Clio crew claim Crail.\u00a0 Alistair Hutchinson was the happy pilot and his steady drive netted him our maximum points on round 5 of this year\u2019s championship.\u00a0 Alistair owns a couple of Clios and this blue and yellow livered version is the \u2018older\u2019 one that has seen a lot of service but was the one to serve him well this time out. Alistair, and non-registered co driver Andrew Hutchinson, showed a good pace all day and experienced no problems; his only suggestion would have been to use harder compound tyres if only he had some.\u00a0 Wining class 3 and taking 6th<\/sup>\u00a0overall was a cracking result and made the long trip from Mickleton worthwhile.\u00a0 And having playing his Joker on the rally too, Alistair now takes over at the top of the driver\u2019s list.\u00a0 Having scored highly on the 4 events that he has started this year, this good form looks championship-winning material so it will be interesting to see who will apply pressure over the final 3 rallies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Peugeot 206 of Gareth White and Harry Marchbank were our 2nd<\/sup>placed crew in 9th<\/sup>\u00a0overall.\u00a0 Gareth wasn\u2019t a very happy man at first service as he was showing down in 19th<\/sup>\u00a0place so he decided to lowered the suspension a little and bolt on new tyres.\u00a0 This shrewd move gave him more confidence and the times improved too; by the end of the day he\u2019d won his class as well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Only 11 seconds behind, and rounding off the top ten overall, was Neil Thompson.\u00a0 He called upon the services of Chris Purvis for duties in the silly seat of his Vauxhall Corsa on this rally and renewed an old partnership.\u00a0 Neil was another unhappy driver at first service because of some panel damage to the nearside front panel \/ corner when he found a large tractor tyre right on his line into a tight corner on stage 2.\u00a0 No mechanical problems surfaced as the event unfolded, just his tidy little car looked a bit battle weary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ever-positive Stuart Walker was next along in 11th<\/sup>\u00a0position.\u00a0 He was introducing a youngster from Mull, Lewis Brown, to co-driving and the new pairing worked well.\u00a0 There were no mechanical problems this time out having replaced his sick engine from Ingliston with his spare engine.\u00a0 Only some front panel damage inflicted when overtaking another competitor on the opening test was recorded.\u00a0 At the end of the day, the Skoda Fabia would be just 2 seconds behind Neil Thompson.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our next points scorer was Shona Hale.\u00a0 She hitched a ride with late entry, the non-registered Michael Glendinning, and they would set off running into SS1 as the last car on the road.\u00a0 No issues to report other than the driver \u2018bust\u2019 his ankle jumping \/ falling off the trailer the day before the rally !\u00a0 They ended up in 13th<\/sup>\u00a0overall.\u00a0 Kenny Moore was out again in his immaculate Hillman Avenger and was another to report an almost trouble free day.\u00a0 He had to call in a replacement co-driver as Dick Wardle got his dates mixed up and committed to another offer of rallying in Donegal that weekend.\u00a0 Kenny\u2019s only issue was when he hit some tyres at the bottom of the circuit and ended up in the grass but with fairly minimal time loss.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stephen Bethwaite and Ann Forster were first time visitors to Crail and found the stage layout very fast for their little 1400cc Vauxhall Nova.\u00a0 But they loved it.\u00a0 They suffered no gearbox gremlins this time to slow them down although Stephen did report hearing a few more rattles and knocks by the end of the day.\u00a0 The timesheets showed they finished in an excellent 21st<\/sup>\u00a0overall and were the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0championship contenders to take a class win on the rally.\u00a0 And with the use of a Joker, Stephen now jumps to 7th<\/sup>\u00a0driver while Ann takes over at the head of the co-driver\u2019s table.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chris McCallum was yet another driver with a new man alongside him in his Ford Escort Mk2.\u00a0 Going into the first long stage of the morning in 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0place, he then hit some tyres; damaged the steering; lost over 2 minutes and at the lunchtime service was in a lowly 32nd<\/sup>\u00a0position but back on the up. \u00a0 Once a new steering arm was fitted, Chris felt they he was going well in the pair of afternoon stages and his times were now well inside the top 20.\u00a0 He\u2019d end up being classified as 25th<\/sup>\u00a0overall.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Peugeot 205 of Alistair Haw \/ Chris Lees came home in 27th<\/sup>\u00a0after a reliable, trouble free run.\u00a0 The boys were well chuffed with their day and are already looking forward to contesting our next round, the Tyneside.\u00a0 Next along was the similar car of Kevin Mathers and Craig Forsyth.\u00a0 Kevin\u2019s \u2018other car\u2019 wasn\u2019t quite ready for this event so he tried using some different gear ratios to see if that would help his cause.\u00a0 It might have done but a big spin on SS2 lost them about 30 seconds and then they hit a pothole on the next test and this damaged the hub.\u00a0 They were 39th<\/sup>\u00a0overall.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stephen Thompson and David Crosbie were next and shown as 43rd<\/sup>\u00a0overall.\u00a0 This just doesn\u2019t do them justice after a great run until the last stage.\u00a0 They would start the final run in their Ford Escort Mk1 in 10th<\/sup>\u00a0overall before hitting a rock that knocked their prop shaft off.\u00a0 They managed to cobble a fix and struggled through to the finish but the stage maximum time was awarded.\u00a0 In reality, this was probably a lot better than all the extra minutes it took them to make it to the stop line.\u00a0 A poor return for a great effort.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Colin Butler was out in the Tango Clio from the MSS stable and had a trouble free run although he wasn\u2019t really enjoying himself.\u00a0 The thought of packing in had occurred to him but encouraged by the \u2018young un\u2019 sitting alongside him, Joe Hutchinson, he thoroughly enjoyed the final stage.\u00a0 Perhaps they should have had that conversation at 9 o\u2019clock on rally morning !<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And our final finisher was Karl Knox in his Vauxhall Nova.\u00a0 This was Karl\u2019s first ever rally and he recruited an experienced driver in the shape of Pete Gibson to guide him around.\u00a0 Teething troubles with the \u2018new\u2019 car meant oil was seeping out from the sump gasket and his Dad and Uncle did a fix of sorts in first service.\u00a0 Then a misfire slowed progress but by the finish of the rally they felt they were going quicker.\u00a0 Praise coming from the left hand seat at the end of the day was that Karl had listened and done as told so hopefully we have a bright prospect for the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our list of retirements from this event is very short as we only lost 3 of our championship contenders during the day.\u00a0 The husband and wife team of Tom and Sue Hynd were first to go when starting their second lap of the first stage the gearbox gave up; current leading driver Barry Renwick was next when he and Paul Hughes retired from 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0overall as their Proton succumbed to the same electrical issue that forced them out of the previous rally at Ingliston; this just left Alistair and Colin Inglis as our final retirees as they cut short stage 3 when lying in 5th<\/sup>\u00a0overall as they had big concerns over the high water temperature in their Honda engined Lotus Exige.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A big \u2018thank you\u2019 to Robert Ness and all his team at Glenrothes Motor Sport Club for their efforts in running both a Senior and Junior rally that was well received.\u00a0 The use of 3 laps of the Crail airfield pushed 4 of the 6 tests run into longer than usual stages.\u00a0 Lots of crews enjoyed these 11 plus mile stages and despite the surface breaking up on the line into a couple of chicanes, there were few complaints heard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our next qualifying rally is the Tyneside Stages sponsored by\u00a0Retro Motorsport<\/strong>. This is scheduled for Sunday 7th<\/sup>\u00a0August and will be our first visit of the year to Otterburn Ranges.\u00a0 The Regulations were recently published with online entries opening last week.\u00a0 And it\u2019s good to see that the Organisers already have a full list with entries queuing already.\u00a0 There\u2019s a new man at the helm for this rally but he has lots of experience of being Clerk of the Course at Otterburn.\u00a0 We wish Ed Barber well as he brings some freshness to the Tyneside. The rally website is\u00a0http:\/\/www.alnwickmotorclub.co.uk\/tyneside-stages-rally<\/a>\u00a0where you\u2019ll find more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CUB Clio crew claim Crail.\u00a0 Alistair Hutchinson was the happy pilot and his steady drive netted him our maximum points on round 5 of this year\u2019s championship.\u00a0 Alistair owns a couple of Clios and this blue and yellow livered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,14,25,36,35,13,8,42,34,7],"post_series":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asperformance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}