“We’ll definitely come back stronger this year; I wouldn’t miss Rally Barbados.”
Positive words from Britain’s Kevin Procter preparing for Sol Rally Barbados 2018, later this year after finishing second in the Christmas Stages Rally at Croft Circuit in the north of England, where freezing overnight temperatures threw up some tough challenges for the more than 80 starters.
“The only downside for me is that my wife and family won’t be able to come as my daughter is in her last year at school. She has her GCSEs, so it’ll have to be a ‘boys only’ event,” the flamboyant Yorkshireman added.
Procter and long-term co-driver Dave Bellerby have won the Christmas Stages at Croft seven times since 2008 in the Impreza S7 that regularly travelled to Barbados, although he retired the Fiesta from the 2016 event with head gasket failure.
In the Christmas Stages Rally, Procter and Bellerby were seeded at number two in a delayed start until track conditions improved, but the front-running drivers cleared the road, which helped the later runners who benefited from better conditions.
After the first of the scheduled eight 6.10-mile stages, Procter was 75th, with a time three minutes slower than early leaders Ryan Fagan and Jamie McTavish, seeded at 96 and the last starters in their Ford Escort MkII. For safety reasons, the organisers had doubled the start intervals from 30 to 60 seconds, and the conditions had improved significantly over 90 minutes.
While Procter made progress through the field, 51st after SS2, 12th after SS4, others were doing the same, including the crew of Simon de Banke and Phil Mills in a Fiesta R5. Having started at 16, they did not lose as much time as Procter on the opening stage and held on for the victory by 45 seconds over six stages, the late start resulting in the final two stages of the day being cancelled.
Hugely popular with fans for his flamboyant and attacking driving style, Procter has now won nine top ten results, including victory in WRC 2, catering for world cars built before the end of 2003, in his Impreza S7 in Rally Barbados 2015.
The highest-placed European driver in Rally Barbados 2005, in a Ford Puma Evo 4 x 4 and the highest-placed overseas driver a year earlier in a Ford Escort Cosworth, he will again have Andrew Roughead, who sat with him in Barbados for the first time last year, as his co-driver in the Caribbean’s biggest annual motor sport international in the Procter’s Coaches Ford Fiesta and is the third overseas entry confirmed for the WRC-1 category,
Graham Coffey and Rob Swann, both in Subaru Impreza WRC S12Bs, who finished eighth and second respectively in last year’s event are two other drivers already entered WRC 2, so far.
Organised by the Barbados Rally Club, Sol Rally Barbados 2018 will mark the 11th year of title sponsorship by the Sol Group, and the third by communications provider Flow. It will run from June 1 to 3, with The Rally Show and Flow King Of The Hill on May 26 and 27. (TT)
