Bothwell driver Alick Kerr turned in another fine performance on the past weekends Station Garage Mitsubishi Granite City Rally to secure his third top five result in a row, a result which extends his lead in the Hankook MSA Scottish Rally Championship.

While this in itself was an impressive result, it was all the more so considering the fact that the Kompact Kitchens Rangemaster backed Impreza was without 5th & 6th gears for almost the entire day.

The family run team had made a few changes to the setup of the car following the pre-event trip to preparation experts TEG Sport, and right from the start of stage 1 Kerr, along with regular navigator Neil Shanks, could feel the improvements in the car and felt ready to mount a challenge for a podium spot. This challenge was soon blunted, as just 1 mile into stage 1 the gearbox refused to select 5th or 6th gear.
 

Mindful of the fact that there was still nearly 40 competitve miles remaining, the Bags Online and Opie Oils backed driver decided that rather than risk further gearbox damage that would end his event decided to limit himself to the 4 working gears that remained. This would limit the crew to a maximum speed of 70mph and thoughts of the podium would have to wait for the next event;

“After making some fairly major changes to the setup of the car I was expecting to take a bit of time to get used to things, but straight away the car gave me confidence and everything felt good. We came out of only the first junction and the car just wouldn’t take 5th gear. I got a sinking feeling straight away, but as the car still seemed fine with 4th and below all we could do was continue with what we had. Looking at the times at the stage end showed that it was still possible to salvage a decent result” explained the young Foundry Engineer.

Emerging from the first stage in a tie for 4th, Alick was amazed to still be 7th overall arriving back at the Aboyne service. Without the luxury of a spare gearbox the rest of the event would be about salvaging the best result possible from a difficult day, and stage 4 proved just how difficult.

The crew had targeted this stage as the one that would suit the handicapped car the best, but a worrying escalation in the gearbox problem was to cost more time. Halfway through what was a good run, the gearbox refused to select anything above 2nd gear. Thankfully, the problem cleared itself as quickly as it manifested but the damage was done and a further 20 seconds were lost.

Over the final 2 flowing stages of the event Alick & Neil put in a strong performance to take another 2 top 5 stage times, ending the event in an unlikely 5th overall, an event which both amazed and delighted the team;

“To be able to get a top 5 result despite the problems we have had is amazing, and if I was offered that at the end of stage one I would have went home happy. Even harder to believe is the fact we have actually extended our championship lead, although when you start to consider dropped scores we have to start looking for wins. To have 3 scores on the board from 3 events is fantastic and hopefully to be holding the championship lead repays the faith of our sponsors, and we wouldn’t be in this position without their continued support ”

In addition to getting to the bottom of the gearbox problem, the Impreza will now be refettled and changed over to tarmac specification before the Duns based Jim Clark Reivers rally on Sunday 30th May. For further information on the team and partnership opportunities, please go to www.alickkerr.com