Daniel and co-driver Arthur Kierans hit their goal of taking a fourth victory in a row in the Rally 2 category of the BRC at the Trakrod rally of Yorkshire after a fantastic battle with their closest championship rivals. The Pickering based event used the classic Yorkshire stages such as Dalby, Langdale and Staindale made famous by the RAC rally having been used for many years by some of the world’s best drivers. After winning the R2 battle at the brilliant event, Daniel and Arthur have really put themselves in pole position to become the R2 champions. Here is how it unfolded.
Daniel and Arthur were in confident mood approaching the start of the event as it began with two night stages which Daniel is very comfortable at, with lots of night time driving under his belt. Daniel has also competed on this event in 2010 and some of the stages for this weekend were the same as 2010, which made it the first time this season Daniel was not at a disadvantage in terms of knowledge. The Scanbitz Ltd and Ravelol Motoroil backed Fiesta R2 was in fine fettle for the event and the whole team were ready for a maximum attack approach to the event.
Daniel hit the ground running on the opening night stages and set the pace ending the first leg of the event with a 15 second lead extracting almost a second a mile from his closest rival, Steve Rokland. Daniel and Arthur’s task now was to control the rally from the lead.
Saturday morning and the crews were greeted to fantastic weather and perfect rally conditions. Daniel again kept up his high pace on the first stage of the morning but this time was a second of the pace, but still held a 15 second lead. On the second stage of the morning, a six mile test Gale Rigg, Daniel felt quite happy with his pace crossing the finishing line of the stage, happy that a healthy lead should still be in tact, but the stage times would tell a different story. Jon Armstrong who lay second had slashed 8 seconds of Daniel’s lead and Steve Rokland had taken 9 to remain third. After a lot of head scratching Daniel took full responsibility and had just been caught napping on the stage.
After a short service the classic 15 miles of Langdale lay ahead and it could possibly decide the outcome of the event despite there being a repeat of the two Friday night stage after it. Daniel decided maximum attack was the only option to try and build on his 6 second lead. Everything was going to plan until about half way through the stage where Daniel had an overshoot losing around five or six seconds but kept his pace up towards the end of the stage hoping he had done enough to hold on to the lead. Daniel surrendered only one second to Armstrong but Rokland really made a move in this stage leaping into 2nd place and cutting Daniel’s lead to a mere 0.1 of a second.
Another short service before tackling the final two stages and Daniel had no intentions of losing his lead that he had worked so hard for on the Friday night. Daniel again went out on maximum attack with no mistakes and really stamped their authority on the battle taking eight seconds out of Rokland and six seconds out of Armstrong on the first of the two last stages. The same approach for the final stage saw Daniel going fastest again to win the event by 11.9 seconds. An added bonus for Daniel and Arthur was that their closest rival for the R2 title Rokland, was beaten to second place by Armstrong on the final stage by 0.1 of a second.
This now gives Daniel and Arthur a 10 point lead over Rokland after dropping their worst score of the season. As a result, if Rokland were to win the final round, Rallye Sunseeker, Daniel and Arthur could afford to finish fifth and still win the championship by one point, which is an even better position than Daniel could have hoped for before the Yorkshire rally.
Daniel will let you all know how preparation is going before the final round with a pre-event press release leading up to the event so keep an eye on his website, danielmckenna.net. In the meantime keep up to date on Daniel’s Twitter and Facebook pages for any updates over the next few weeks.
