Barrett Claims Victory at the FUCHS LUBRICANTS MSA BHRC Pirelli Stages

A glorious battle between Paul Barrett and Matthew Robinson marked round two of the FUCHS LUBRICANTS MSA British Historic Rally Championship on the Pirelli Rally (Saturday 28 April).

After a fierce but entirely sporting contest, Barrett and Dai Roberts took victory by just 8.6s over the similar Ford Escort Mk2 of Robinson and Dave Robson. The deciding stage was the epic 15.39-mile test in The Forks where a blistering attack by Barrett turned the rally in his favour.

A tremendous field lined up to tackle four big stages in the main block of the mighty Kielder forest complex and there was universal praise for the quality of the roads as the 2WD field ran ahead of contenders in the MSA British Rally Championship. As ever, the punishing Kielder ditches claimed cars and the top two crews could easily have joined the list of victims, such was their pace.

Overall spoils in the Skipton Ford Category 2 went to a tremendous performance from Mark Holmes/Craig Simkiss (Ford Escort Mk1). Holmes had just two seconds in hand over class C5 rivals Warren Philliskirk and Garry Green after Philliskirk clawed back a lot of time in The Forks.

The ‘Spirit of the Rally’ product award from FUCHS LUBRICANTS went to Josh Carr and Ben Hall who had dug deep to get their Ford Escort Mk1 back out after a major engine failure on Rally North Wales. They were leading class C3 at main service but then went out on the final stage of the Pirelli with gearbox problems. Despite this second blow, the family-based team has pledged to get back out again as quickly as possible.

Full event results are here: http://results.djames.org.uk/results/?e=528