Team UK driver Dave Weston Junior and his co-driver Ieuan Thomas have taken sixth place on Rally Isle of Man, despite losing over five minutes with problems on the event.
After sitting second equal with Gwyndaf Evans following the opening stage, Dave lost over three minutes in stage two when he was forced to stop and change a puncture on his Ramsport-run Subaru Impreza N2010 mid stage.
“After that stage we were lying 29th overall,” said Dave. “Then in stage five we lost more time when the car slid off the road and got wedged in a gateway.
“I’ve not really rallied in the wet much, and the Isle of Man conditions have been extremely wet at times. My confidence built by the end of leg one though and we were second fastest through Marine Drive and the two Castletown runs. We went home for the day having worked our way up to 14th overnight.”
Good times continued on leg two, a day when a lot of the frontrunners including Dave fell foul of the wrong tyre choice with conditions in the TT Grandstand base being so different to those on the opening stages.
“As our times improved we worked our way back up to finish sixth overall and thankfully had quite a problem free day apart from dealing with more Manx downpours,” said Dave. “In the end we lost out on fifth overall by just a tenth of a second to Finnish driver Jarkko Nikara which is really gutting, but when I was lying 29th overall I suppose I would have been grateful for sixth.
“The Manx lanes can be trying even when they’re dry so to take home a sixth place BRC points haul on a Manx rally where conditions have been so testing is great. Even the local drivers were saying it was the worst rain they could ever remember on the event.”
The team’s next event will be the fifth round of the BRC, International Rally Northern Ireland next month. The crew go to the event with Dave lying fifth overall on the BRC points table.