Rally Season
- October 9th, 2010
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Cork 20 Success for Ling and Rees
Welsh rally duo Sebastian Ling and Aled Rees continued their successful career with a well judged and mature drive on the recent Cork 20 International Rally based in Ireland. The Cork 20 is one of the oldest Rallies in Europe and this years event was the 95th year of its successful running. The rally was based in Macroom with the majority of the stages hosted to the west of County Cork. The rally was also the last round of the Irish Tarmac Championship and boasted a quality entry list which read as a whose’ who of Irish and British championship Drivers. The rally started in earnest on the Saturday morning and consisted of three loops of three stages, with another three loops of two stages on Sunday
The Newcastle Emlyn based crew finished a creditable 6th overall and 2nd in the Production Group N category. ‘It’s only the third rally I have competed in this year, due to work commitments’ commented Sebastian ‘ so it was good to see that we were on the pace from the start of the rally and able to match a lot of regular Irish competitors for stage times, and indeed beating a few of them by the end of the weekend!’
The rally did not start well for the guys as the traitorous weather made choosing the right tyres very difficult. ‘we left the service area on Saturday afternoon in glorious sunshine’ commented Aled ‘but by the time we reached the second loop of stages in the hills surrounding Cork there was torrential rain and we had chosen slick tyres! Not the best solution at all! But we soldiered on and it was a credit to our tyres sponsor Khumo tyres that we did not have any scary moments at all during those stages !’ he said. But by the following pass the pair were quickly making their mark on the rally, setting many a fastest time within their class, and steadily making their way up the leader board.
The good rhythm and pace set by the welsh team ensured that this years leading British Group N, Alistair Fisher could not relax for a minute as the Welsh duo had their sights firmly set on his back bumper!
The car, an ex-works Mitsubishi Evo9 recently acquired by Sebastian and run by the PLE Motorsport team ran perfectly all weekend, and it only needed minor tweeking during the service intervals of the rally. ‘I am very happy with how the car ran’ said Sebastian, ‘it has not missed a beat all rally and when I got the tyre choice right, they were fantastic and big thank you to Khumo tyres for their ongoing support in helping me through this year’ I hope there is time to have one more rally in before the end of the year, as I have had many invitations to return to France to compete following our success in May.