Photo Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography Rallying; adjective: having the effect of calling people to action. It was all looking rather familiar for Sweden's Fredrik Ahlin on the Saturday night of the Nicky Grist Stages, round five of the 2017 Prestone MSA British Rally Championship. Blindingly fast, but perhaps unlucky, and a rapid Welshman with WRC experience ahead of him in a Ford Fiesta R5. A couple of things had changed from this year to last. The Swede, still with CA1 Sport, had switched to the Skoda Fabia R5 from the M-Sport machine campaigned previously, and swapped Morten Erik Abrahamsen's voice for Torstein Eriksen's. He also had been at the top of the championship for the first time in his BRC career, but four and a half rounds in and it was looking like Ahlin was experiencing something the French would call deja vu: already seen. Running second on the road behind Osian Pryce should have been an advantage in the Welsh wilderness. Pryce, now at the top of the championship thanks to a strong run of four podium places, was having to sweep the loose gravel from the sandy stages as expected, but was emerging from each with a much clearer view. Dust was hanging and struggling to clear, severely hampering Osian's rivals who could do nothing to respond to the Welshman's pace. For the second loop, the gap between cars was increased from one to two minutes, which let Ahlin back into the game, but Pryce still held a 20 second lead going into Sunday's tarmac tests on the legendary Epynt military ranges. Ahlin had proved his pace on tarmac but was yet to bag the result to go with it. A clipped kerb on the Circuit of Ireland last year and a crash in Ulster came before an incredibly unfortunate slow speed roll last time out in Ypres which let the consistent Pryce by in the championship race. Conversely, Pryce had the result, third in Ypres, but with the Belgian event being his first on the black stuff in an R5, his pace was less of a guarantee. The stage was set. Twelve demanding stages and two competitive drivers squabbling over a rally win and the bigger prize of a national championship. Pryce has come close to a British Rally Championship title more than once, coming second in the series behind Jukka Korhonen and then Daniel McKenna in the R3 days. A win on the Nicky Grist Stages, his Joker nominated round, would have put him in a great position to finally get his name on that illustrious trophy. Instead, Pryce's dreams and our entertainment would be cut short by a fuel sensor issue, which sidelined the Spencer Sport Fiesta and paved the way clear for Fredrik Ahlin to take his third victory of the year and move into what now looks like a comfortable championship lead barring any serious trouble. Gutting for Pryce, who just one week ago suffered the biggest accident of his career in treacherous conditions on WRC Rally Poland. For Ahlin however, he will feel that karma has paid him a handsome visit. Or, to link back to my top line, he was called into action with a smattering of good fortune. Fredrik's BRC career has been plagued with bad luck. Were it not for a stone that punctured his radiator on the final stage of the Scottish Rally, we may not even be contemplating the prospect of a championship showdown at all. But with Pryce out the way and the expected challenge of Ypres winner Keith Cronin ending in a ditch, all Ahlin had to do was bring his black and gold Skoda to the end in Builth Wells. It will take a brave man to bet against Ahlin now, who is vying to become the first foreign driver to call himself British Rally Champion since Korhonen in 2013. He has been the out and out pace setter in 2017, with many feeling he would have got the better of Pryce over Epynt even if the Welshman's Ford hadn't expired. Photo Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography Title chasers aside however, the real story perhaps comes from the remainder of the podium.
With Desi Henry and Jonny Greer away back home in Ireland competing on the clashing Sligo Stages, no Tom Cave and David Bogie not able to compete with such a short time window between the Ypres Rally and the Nicky Grist Stages to repair his Fabia R5, the door was opened for some other drivers to hog the limelight on the rally named after Juha Kankkunen and Colin McRae's former co-driver. Matt Edwards had already stolen his moment of glory a fortnight ago. With many falling by the wayside in the demanding Flanders fields, the Welshman picked his way through the tightening junctions and notorious cuts to take an incredibly emotional second in the BRC. This result earned the dubbing of "the best result of my career", but fast forward the clock 14 days and he was back again, second overall on a British championship event to move him up to a sensational third place in the championship. For a driver who only has a handful of events under his belt in an R5 car and has to settle the repair bill himself, that is an incredible achievement and one that shouldn't go unnoticed. Standing one step below on the podium and for the very first time in the BRC was Chesterfield driver Rhys Yates. Five years ago Yates had never started a forest event before, but in just his second season in the BRC he is now a podium finisher, but he had to work for it. Work hard. Nobody wants Marty McCormack breathing down their neck on a tarmac rally, but that's exactly where Rhys Yates found himself heading into the final stage of the Grist. His Irish rival, using Alister Fisher's Fiesta R5 as his Fabia R5 was in need of a re-shell after its battering in a Belgian field, managed to cut his deficit to the Englishman but it wasn't enough. In the end, 3.7 seconds was all that separated the pair. It will be fascinating to see how both Edwards and Yates feed off these results in the future. But it's worth noting that both were without their regular co-drivers Darren Garrod and Carl Williamson in Wales. The British Rally Championship now faces a break of just over a month before the penultimate round in August, the Ulster Rally. Plenty of drivers will be heading over on the ferry with their eyes fixated on the win, but will Fredrik Ahlin be one of them? Drivers will always tell you it is much easier to drive at 100% than it is at 95, but the Swede now has the points luxury of being able to back out of an intense fight in the interest of bagging championship markers. It's his to lose, but stranger things have happened.
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“Right three into long crest 150, slowing into deceptive left five don’t cut…” may just be a random collaboration of instructions and numbers to you, but it’s the fine line between success and failure for any rally driver. After ten years behind the wheel, Kinross rally driver Blair Brown has hung up the keys to his Ford Fiesta R2T and taken a step back from his rallying career. A career that began racing quad bikes as a young boy soon evolved into driving rally cars at national and then international level. And that’s no real surprise; the Brown name is well known in the service park. Dad, Paul Brown, competes alongside Scottish Championship competitor Steven Clark in a Mitsubishi Evo, so naturally Blair was always destined to get involved in some capacity. “My dad is a co-driver so I was always around rallying,” he recalls. “I started racing quad bikes when I was 11 until I was 16 and about to enter the adult class. That’s when I started the Junior 1000 Rally Championship in 2012. I’d only driven a car four times before but it went really well. “I then moved straight onto the 205 Ecosse Challenge in the Scottish Rally Championship, doing two years in the series. From then on we focussed on the British Championship and looked at trying to make a career out of rallying. It took a long time for us to get the Ford Fiesta R2T so we didn’t compete much in 2015, but we did the full Junior British Rally Championship in 2016. It was ten years in the making to get to this stage so it’s been quite a long journey.” A long and successful journey by all accounts. Since switching to rallying Blair’s progression has been superb. He’s taken on a very steep learning curve but has accumulated plenty of accolades including 1st Ecosse 205 Challenge teen driver in 2013 and 14, 1st Ecosse 205 Challenge junior driver in 2014 and second overall in his class during the 2014 Scottish Rally Championship, also picking up the RSAC New Talent Scholarship that lasted throughout those years. Moving to a turbocharged car and international rallying was a big step up, both in terms of the competition and financially. “We got good backing from QTS for our first year but it was mainly self-funded,” Blair explains. “We didn’t have a big budget to go and test so we were just doing the events, meaning I turned up for the Mid Wales [round one] having only driven the car once on gravel. I was pretty chuffed to get sixth considering our competition, but it was a massive step up.” Brown’s British Championship campaign was a learning one. Two sixth places in Wales and two fifths at home in Scotland and on the Isle of Man were highlights, but mechanical issues in Ireland, inexperience with creating pace notes in England and a final stage crash on the penultimate event meant he finished up ninth in the championship. “Throughout the BRC year we did get a lot quicker, but the biggest problem was our budget made it harder to compete. The Circuit of Ireland in particular we were away for ten days, and then there was stepping up to international licenses so it was a mammoth task without even driving the car a mile. We had the right tyres and fuel but that was the story of the season for us. We probably had 50% of the budget that the guys ahead of us had.” And it’s that budget that has ultimately seen Blair cut his international rallying career short. “I work for the family building business and always have done, so I understood where most of the money to go rallying was coming from. The stress of my family putting money towards it had played on my mind but it never really got to me until the BRC where what we were putting in just wasn’t enough. If you don’t have enough money to do that championship properly there’s no point in doing it at all. I’d be working from 6am-6pm and then spending my evenings into the early hours in the garage working on the rally car, and I wasn’t even getting enough time to properly work on my pace notes. If I did get enough sponsorship then I would’ve been able to take time off work and do it all properly, and would more than likely have been much further up the leader-board than I was. “The big focus for me now is making the family business successful and hopefully then I can come back to rallying in a few years’ time at a more enjoyable, clubman level; maybe in a decent four wheel drive car where I can have a bit of fun! I’ll look at doing more selected events, potentially next year but definitely in three years’ time.” The M-Sport machine Blair has campaigned is now up for sale, but the 21 year old is satisfied knowing he gave rallying his ‘best shot.’ “A lot of people say to me ‘it’s such a shame you’ve had to stop it’; but I don’t have to, I chose to. This was my decision to stop because I simply don’t want to put my family at risk or make myself miserable doing something I love. I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world to have been able to rally, and I did so at a high level as well, so I appreciate how lucky I am and I never will regret any of it. I won’t regret stepping away either as I gave it my best shot.” If money was no objectBlair Brown is a quality rally driver, potentially good enough to beat a man who was running as high as third in WRC-2 on Rally Poland, Gus Greensmith, if he could compete financially. “When I was in my second year in the 205 we had a big budget for our championship, so did fourteen events that year,” he explains. “We went down to the Pirelli to do the BRC as a clubman competitor and our times against the juniors in an R1 specification car were strong; we were beating Gus in our little 205. In the same space of time he has managed to become an international rally driver. It’s a good comparison as with the extra money he’s been able to put a lot of time into it.” The thrillPushing the limits on a challenging piece of road is always enjoyable for rally drivers, but doing that against the big names was what Blair really derived pleasure from. “We finished our season on a big high on the Isle of Man last year, the last event I’ve done in a rally car. I had Steven Clark co-driving for me which made a big difference to push me on. We were in the mix with everybody else and posted some seriously quick times, keeping up with all the top boys it was very, very fast. “But just competing at that sort of level was tremendous. Sitting waiting to get into a stage and there were 70 or so cars waiting to start and that’s the first real buzz you get that you’re competing in an international rally, the names there are just massive. It was crazy competing 20 and 30 cars behind names that you’ve idolised. It was such a good experience, I’m really appreciative that I was able to do it.” Special thank you to Blair Brown for agreeing to this interview. The piece was submitted as part of my 'Sports Journalism' module at university, hence only now can I publish it after its marking has been completed. The story is no longer particularly newsworthy but I hope you still found it interesting. I wish Blair the best of luck, and hope to see him out in a car some time soon!
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BRITISH RALLYINGArticles covering rally in Britain, looking at the MSA BRC Archives
September 2017
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