For the penultimate round of the Peugeot 205 Scholarship, I enlisted Britain’s youngest co-driver Ella Flynn for the British Rally Championship support rally, based just outside York. Ella has competed on 5 rallies since her 16^th birthday, not many weeks ago and she wanted to have the chance to compete at the front of a highly competitive championship and gain some experience at the sharp end. The decision turned out to be the right one as Ella did not miss a beat all day and we went on to win the Scholarship by a massive 3 minutes, setting 5 fastest stage times from 9 stages!

I was back in my own car after sustaining too much damage to the AB Motorsport built car on the previous rally, although it was a bit touch and go whether the finances would stretch to me contesting this rally.

We got off to a fantastic start, taking 2 seconds out of our main competitor Chris Reid on the first stage, the 0.5 mile spectator stage. Then it was off into the Yorkshire forest for Stage 2 where we took a massive 25 seconds out of the whole field over 9 miles. The car just felt really good and Ella was doing excellent on the notes, world championship material I reckon! We were pushing on through the next stage wanting to collect as many fastest stage times as we could for the fastest times league. We had a spin on one of the bends losing some 15 seconds, however we still set second fastest time only 7 seconds down. Going into Stage 4 with a 17 second cushion was nice, but not enough to back off. Halfway through the stage however, we spotted our teammate Chris Reid’s car, who had suffered a puncture and was dropping a lot of time. I was able to keep it tidy for the rest of that stage. Wrestling with a decision as to what to do next, whether to go out to win all the fastest times or try to take the rally win, the 16 year old voice of reason sat alongside me cleared my thoughts, after threatening to cause physical harm to me if I didn’t give her the champagne celebration she had deserved! This meant that the car was brought home safely and indeed given a drink of champagne for its trouble.

Once again a massive thanks to AB Motorsport who did a great job supporting us throughout the day.

Thanks to Pentti Arikilla for helping set up the brakes before the rally. Thanks to the Higgins Forest Experience for providing some fantastic testing in the Rally School Forest before the rally.