After a very tough weekend’s rallying in the Scottish Borders at the 2nd round of the BRC, the Jim Clark Rally, Daniel and Co-Driver Arthur Kierans finished a very impressive 7th O/A, won the R2 category and an extra bonus was securing the much coveted Pirelli Star Driver (PSD) nomination based on his performance on the weekend’s event.
At the wheel of his Scanbitz Ltd and Ravelol Motoroil Lubricants Ford Fiesta R2, Daniel had a mixed weekend. After a very tough recce on Thursday the crew used the shakedown stage on Friday morning to fine tune the settings on the car before the car passed scrutiny on Friday afternoon prior to the event starting at 7pm Friday evening. The first stage was a short blast around the town of Duns before heading to the mammoth 16 mile stage Abbey St. Bathans.
Then a shorter 4 mile test, which were all then repeated. Daniel set the joint 2nd fastest time on the town stage with no drama, but about 6 miles into the Abbey stage the car dropped down on power getting progressively worse as the stage went on and the crew found them selves 15 seconds off the pace with no chance to repair the unknown problem until after the 6 stages on Friday night were completed before overnight service back at Kelso Racecourse.
After some investigation a faulty fuel pump was diagnosed as the problem and Daniel and Arthur knew they could do nothing but struggle with the intermittent problem until the service crew could change the faulty part. So Daniel and Arthur put in a massive effort on the remaining stages that were completed in the darkness of Friday night doing their best to minimize their disadvantage and finished leg 1 of the event 2nd in the R2 category and 18 seconds behind the leader, local man Gary Pearson despite the car being very uncompetitive.
The service crew then kicked into action and after a late night, a second hand fuel pump was fitted to the car with the hopes of the power loss problems eliminated before Daniel and Arthur could launch their attack for the lead of the R2 class. Leg 2 of the event was a scheduled 90 stage miles, but with the longest stage of the day being cancelled due to Marshall Problems the route was reduced by 27 miles which was going to make Daniel’s job even harder. However Daniel attacked undeterred and set fastest R2 time taking 8 seconds of the leader reducing the gap to 10 seconds but unfortunately the power loss problem was not fully rectified but was a lot more manageable than Friday night.
For the next test Daniel found himself on the front foot and was confident of taking the lead from Pearson and the pressure applied to the leader was enough as Daniel was promoted to the lead as his leading rival had a spin and dropped 30 seconds, so Daniel and Arthur had a 20 second lead.
On the next test the battle was over as Pearson crashed out of the event and Daniel and Arthur had a 58 second lead over the next R2 car. So with a car not at 100% Daniel kept pushing hard with a string of fastest R2 stage times throughout Saturday to keep the concentration levels high and also trying to impress the secret judging panel who would decide which driver would become the PSD nomination winner. Daniel stretched his lead to a 1min 40 secs in the R2 category and 7th O/A by the finish with hopes of securing the coveted nomination.
At the finish ramp in Kelso town centre, it was announced that Daniel was the chosen nominee for the PSD competition which was the perfect way to cap of a brilliant performance on a very challenging event.
Daniel and Arthur now find themselves joint leading the R2 category in the championship and lying joint 5th O/A in the main championship ahead of the 3rd round of their campaign, the Scottish rally in Dumfries which is back on gravel.
Daniel will let you all know how preparation are going for the with a Pre- event press release so keep an eye on his website, Twitter and Facebook pages over the next few weeks.
