Stephen Petch Junior made up for his recent run of bad luck by scoring a well deserved victory on round 5 of the 2006 Mitsubishi Evolution Cup on this weekend’s Swansea Bay Rally.
After the recent problems on the Jim Clark International Rally Stephen was just hoping for a clean run this weekend and opened his account with 5th fastest in group N through the first 16 mile stage, despite suffering in the hanging dust and suffering a brief spin half way through the stage. 5th quickest in class through the second stage meant he was lying 4th in Group N and 13th overall at the first service.
Stephen then really upped his pace and set a string of blistering stage times over the remaining 4 stages, going fastest in Group N on all of them and setting a string of top 10 overall times to eventually bring his SG Petch Scalextric Mitsubishi Evo IX home in a brilliant 9th overall, 2nd in Group N and 1st in the Mitsubishi Evo Cup.
Stephen has to be more than happy with this result as he was going head to head with Julian Reynolds who, as last years winner of this rally, was running first on the road, with the advantage of not having dust hanging in the air. As Stephen competes against Julian in the Tesco 99 Octane MSA British Rally championship this has done a lot for his confidence.
“We’ve known all along that we’ve got the pace, but niggling problems have held us back. Hopefully this result has shown that we have what it takes to run at the front” said the Richmond driver.
Stephen and the rest of the team now begin preparing for round 3 of the 2006 Tescos 99 Octane MSA British Rally Championship, the Rally Isle of Man, which runs from 3rd to 5th August 2006.
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