JAMAICA’S ace rallyist Jeffrey Panton wrote his name in Barbados motor sport history when he became the first overseas driver to win the coveted Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) champion driver title.
He wrested the title after winning last weekend’s BRC Winter Rally with a total elapsed time of 36 minutes, 35.34 seconds.
In the company of co-driver Michael Fennell Jr, Panton, driving the Rubis/Sandals Barbados/KIG Ford Focus WRC06 completed the seven-round season with a perfect record of class wins, adding the WRC and four-wheel drive championships to his tally.
With torrential rain throughout the two-day 12-stage event and problems of varying kinds befalling the competitors, only a non-finish could have cost Panton the champion driver title.
Considering the WRC class was under-subscribed, a total of 124 points, out of a potential 133, was enough.
Supermodified 3 (SM3) champion Andrew Jones finished second on 119, with Stuart Garcia, in a BMW 318ti Compact. They crowned an impressive debut season in Clubman 2 with the class title and third overall with 118 points.
Only half the field finished the Winter Rally, after competitors and organisers battled with the challenges presented by Saturday’s torrential rainstorms in the north of the island where the event was centred.
Second place
Englishman Rob Swann and Welsh co-driver Darren Garrod, in the Subaru Impreza WRC S12B, finished second, one minute 35.47 seconds behind Panton and Fennell.
Barry Mayers and Ben Norris, in the Ford Fiesta, were a further three minutes 25.33 seconds behind and were also the highest placed two-wheel drive competitors.
Outgoing BRC champion driver Daryl Clarke and co-driver Russell Brancker, in the Honda Civic took fourth spot, three minutes 48.12 seconds off the winners. Andrew Jones and Lindsey Pilkington, in the Ford Escort MkII were down four minutes 03.92 seconds behind the top pair.
In Friday night’s two runs of the Vaucluse Raceway Rally Sprint track, a first-run spin for Swann and a second-run puncture for Paul Bird (Focus WRC07) left it finely poised ahead of Saturday’s 12 stages.
Bird was 2.5 seconds up on Panton while Swann had work to do as he was sixth overall and more than 20 seconds behind.
Bird increased his lead on the first run through the five-kilometre Dark Hole to Spring Vale stage, but the skies opened as the field was passing through Special Stage 4 from Hangmans Hill to Lion Castle.
The rain fell relentlessly as Bird’s clutch failed mid-way through the stage, which ended his rally while handing the lead to Panton.
Panton never looked back, winning all but one of the remaining stages, but Swann was quickest on stage four.
With rain continuing to fall, causing many water-logged areas, the organisers cancelled the two subsequent runs of Hangmans Hill to Lion Castle because of safety concerns.
Fastest car
In the Barbados Historic Rally, which was run alongside the Winter Rally, Greg Cozier and Natasha Farnum, in a Ford Escort MkII RS, was fastest on every stage. They won the event and also triumphed in the Classic class.
The German crew of Stefan Oberdorster and Olaf Heupel finished second overall in their Porsche 911, winning the Post-Historic class, while England’s Neil and Natalie Revington, in a Triumph TR5 won the Historic class and were fourth overall. (TT)
