PEDLEY RALLYING

Yesterday saw our second visit of the year to the Three Sisters race circuit at Wigan for the Keith A Wood Memorial Stages organised by our own club High Moor MC. As we arrived the only purpose of us entering the rally was to have a steady run and secure some points for the championship, as the impending trip to Mull meant we couldn't afford to have any dramas with the car.

Photo courtesy of Craig Pedley 

The weather was cold but dry and the first few stages saw us come out of the merge right behind the fellow Swift of Alan Howard and William Kelly, due to the nature of the circuit we had to follow Alan for some distance until he could move over safely and let us past, so after losing some time at the end of stage four, saw us lying second in class behind the Nova of Alistair and David Oram, with Bruce Lindsay and Mark Blunt a couple of seconds behind us, and the battle was on. Chris sniffed the chance of his first class win and the plan we arrived with was thrown firmly out of the window! Stage five saw the stage layout change and meant the merge was on a different point of the circuit, this gave us a good clean run and this showed as we immediately started to take time out of Alistair. At the end of stage five we were dead level for first in class and over the next five stages we continued to take time from Alistair, whilst Bruce started to suffer with car problems, this meant we were able to stretch our lead to twelve seconds by the end of the day and secure the long awaited first class win and our best overall finish of 23rd. 

The win was particularly sweet as it was our home event and with being local, we were supported by many friends and family who at various stages over the last two years had seen the lows and had to pick us up after disappointments, this was a thank you to all of those people.

A big thanks must go to all the team from High Moor MC for organising the event, especially Neil, the Clerk of the Course and his able assistant Matt, Gerry and Gary and not forgetting the entries secretary Lesley (or Mum!!!) Thanks also to Ian Savage of Roundabout Tyres for sponsoring the event, and a special mention for Jean Jakeman who competed on her first rally co-driving for her son Matthew.

Photo courtesy of  Steve Bostock  (Rochdale Observer)