Richard Sykes is looking to build on his championship lead in the forthcoming
Jim Clark International Rally, the second round of the British Rally Championship, an event that takes place over closed public roads in the Scottish Borders, south of Edinburgh.
The first event of the year, the Pirelli, saw Sykes lead the event from start to finish, with his nearest rival finishing nearly nine minutes behind. This year he has changed to a Fiesta ST and having never driven the car previous to the first stage Sykes planned on a steady start and gradually increase the lead stage by stage, a plan which worked perfectly.
I'm over the moon with our result on the Pirelli and thanks to Anthony at West Midlands Motorsport, the car ran absolutely faultless, he said. But I still can't believe our winning margin was so large.
Preparation of the GI Sykes backed Fiesta ST has included changing the suspension over to tarmac set up, as the Jim Clark Memorial is the first of four tarmac events the crews have on their calendars.
I'm really looking forward to the event but again it will be a steady learning curve, I have never driven the new car on tarmac and it will take us a few miles to get used to it, he said. The plan is to have a steady start and up our pace as the event progresses, another maximum points haul is what we want after our success on the previous round. We managed to lead all seven rounds of the championship last year, winning three of them, but still missed out on the championship on the last round, something I want to put right this year.
Sykes will again be joined by regular co-driver Simon Taylor for the event.
