Youthful Conor Roach holds a slender advantage in the race for the champion driver title in the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Virgin Atlantic Championship.
And after the cancellation of this weekend’s speed event because of the low number of entries, lifting the title will come down to the last event scheduled for October 13, the club’s Winter Rally.
The championship is decided on the year end total of class points, with the lowest score dropped. At present, Roach’s lowest score is 13 from King Of The Hill and Rhett Watson’s is 17 from Sol Rally Barbados, which gives Roach a slight edge.
Sunday’s double-header would have been rounds eight and nine of the driver and class championships and a decision regarding the format of that final event will be made shortly.
Roach and Watson are tied at the top of the table with 120 points after seven rounds. Each scored class wins in last month’s BRC Summer Nights Tarmac Sprint.
Roach also heads the Clubman Class, with his Peugeot 106, and Watson, the SuperModified 12, in a BMW M3.
They have been class leaders since the start of the season, with a nearly unblemished record. Roach was beaten by Trevor Mapp in a Mitsubishi Mirage RS at Scotiabank King Of The Hill, while Watson finished behind the BMW M3 of Brian Gill on day one of Sol Rally Barbados.
Group N leader, Geoff Noel, is their closest rival in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, third on 115 points, which falls to 102 after his lowest score is dropped.
However, there are tough battles to be resolved between two-wheel drive aces Josh Read and Ian “WeeWee” Warren in SM10.
Read – who leads the two-wheel drive title chase based on overall results – is ahead of Warren by two points, 109 to 107.
However, with the lowest score dropped – 13 for Read and 11 for Warren – their totals are equal.
The two are also fourth and fifth, respectively, in the champion driver’s table.
A three-way battle for supremacy in Modified 7 is led by Paul Horton, who has 77 to Edward Corbin’s 76 and Daryl Clarke’s 74 and, as they have all failed to score at least once, there is no dropped score to take into account.
Roger Skeete is the class leader in WRC-1 with 104 points to Neil Armstrong’s 79 and also leads Roger Hill (89) by an increased margin of 23 points in the four-wheel championship.
