North Devon driver Jon Tucker and his regular co-driver, Scott Cleverdon joined the other competitors on the start line in their identical Peugeot 206s’ and headed off into the fast flowing stages of the Welsh mountains.

“I’m feeling very confident about this event. We had a good result on the last round and we’ll be looking for the same here. Its going to be a good battle as always” Said Jon before the start.

First up was the fearsomely quick ‘Radnor’ stage and at 14 miles, would be an early wake up call for all the crews. Taking the challenge ‘head on’, the Truscott's of Barnstaple backed car emerged an impressive 6th quickest.

“It was very slippy in places and very dry in others so it was hard to tell where to push and where not to. We had a quite a big ‘moment’ towards the end of the stage and then the brakes started to fade so I think we were trying just hard enough”

After a short service halt the route took the crews west of the town to the next loop of stages which included the famous ‘Halfway’ and ‘Crychan’. 33 miles in total the 5 stages made up almost half the rally.

Unfortunately, after only a few miles into stage 2, the rear section of the exhaust was crushed by a rock and left the 1600cc Peugeot with about 75% of its full power. With no option other than to continue with the car it this state, they were surprised to have only lost one place by the end of the loop.

“This is so frustrating. There is much more grip now and I am really committing to the pace notes, but we’re losing time in the faster sections because the car is under powered.” Jon commented.

The second service was considerably less relaxed than the first one as the service crew hurried to replace the broken exhaust and also lower the front suspension to prevent the understeer that Jon had reported in the earlier stages.

With the car back up to its full power and with new tyres, Jon and Scott headed out for the last loop of three stages. Stage 7 was going very well when disaster struck again. “A big rock wedged itself behind the left, front wheel which made it lock every time I used the brake. I think we lost around 20 seconds and there aren’t enough miles left to get that back so we’ll just try and stay where we are”

The last few miles of the rally would bring yet more bad luck when the cars engine cut out on the start line of both of the last two stages, losing about 15 seconds in the process.

“It was getting ridiculous, we had a problem on every single stage. But I’ve had a lot of fun today so I’m happy enough with 7th”

This moves Jon and Scott up to 7th place in the championship and Truscott's of Barnstaple up to a fantastic 3rd in the Dealer Cup.  Jon is now leading the ‘Hella Cup’ which is based on a drivers improvement on his seeded position.

As always a big thank you goes to our service and management crews and to our sponsors, Truscott's of Barnstaple, Clive White Motorsport and Dymond Engineering.