Friday morning’s Leg 2 dawned dry and sunny as the cars moved out of parc fermé at 9.00am, and the forecast was for more of the same, taking away the difficult tyre choices of the previous evening. By this time, reigning British Rally Champion Jonny Milner (driving his usual Team Dynamics Toyota Corolla WRC) had pulled out a nineteen second advantage over young Finn Jari-Matti Latvala’s M-Sport Ford Focus WRC, fully recovered from his
Jim Clark accident and buoyed up by a good result on the previous weekend’s Rallye Deutschland. Ex-Irish champion Kenny McKinstry (S8 Subaru Impreza WRC) was in third, James Thompson (Ralliart Mitsubishi Lancer E6.5) fourth, and Tapio Laukkanen (Motorsport Leasing/Phil Morgan Subaru Impreza WRC) fifth. Gwyndaf Evans’s MG ZR led Super 1600 from Kris Meeke’s S-Mac Opel Corsa, and Seamus Leonard had taken charge of the Production class from Dick Curran. Things were shaping up for a memorable contest.
Over the first few Friday stages, the action was fast and furious, with Milner, Latvala and Laukanen separated by seconds. McKinstry, however, picked up two simultaneous punctures that cost him three minutes and dropped him down the order to 16th. This seemed a bad omen, because from then on all sorts of disasters started happening to all sorts of crews.
First to suffer were the S16s. Kris Meeke experienced terminal drive-shaft/differential failure and dropped out of second place, thereby robbing the event of an enticing duel between him and Gwyndaf. To make matters worse, Kris’s mentor
Colin McRae had just dropped in by helicopter to lend his support. Three stages later, it was the turn of the old master himself. Gwyndaf had been stuck in fourth gear, but his service crew changed the gearbox at Friday’s first service, although not within the allotted 20 minutes time limit. The resulting three-minute penalty dropped Gwyndaf from seventh overall to 20th, but this proved academic as the replacement box packed up on stage 11. Steve Hill broke a drive-shaft after a particularly heavy landing, picking up a road penalty from which he never really recovered, eventually retiring on Saturday morning with low oil pressure. Leon Pesticcio had a clutch problem, caused by a leaking master cylinder pump that is unfortunately located within the gearbox on the rally version of the Punto. The Hi-Tec crew managed to fit a new gearbox, but he too dropped down the field, eventually collecting two and a half minutes of penalties which put him right out of the competition. Barry Clark also retired his Puma with undisclosed mechanical problems. Net result: only two (Champion and Jennings) out of seven running healthily in the class.
