After an 11-week break following Sol Rally Barbados, battle resumed in the R5 Rally Championship presented by First Citizens over a 4.6-kilometre course in the south-eastern parish of St Philip, running first from Golden Grove to Harrow and including a high-speed approach to the Bushy Park triangle, a popular spot with spectators. All but one of the R5s based in the island was entered for the Burger King-sponsored Double Header, 10 cars representing nearly one-third of the 31-strong entry!

Britain’s Rob Swann set the early pace with 2m 47.89s on his first run, more than 1sec quicker than Jamaican Jeff Panton (2:49.05). Both overseas Ford Fiestas were quicker by some margin than points leader Stuart Maloney’s Skoda Fabia (2:50.20) as everyone felt out the stage, with Andrew Mallalieu and Josh Read’s Fiestas sandwiching Roger Hill’s Fabia to complete the top six. Maloney hacked nearly five seconds off his time on the next run (2:45.40) to move ahead, with Swann (2:45.90), Panton (2:46.70) and Mallalieu (2:47.36) still leading the chase.

On the third run, the front-runners all found chunks more time, Maloney (2:40.79) now leading Panton (2:42.10), with Mallalieu (2:42.24) and Hill (2:42.67) moving ahead of Swann (2:42.75), these four covered by less than seven-tenths. With further improvements for everyone except Mallalieu, another 1.5secs off Maloney’s time (2:39.21) ensured him the win. Panton, now more comfortable with the Fiesta, was second (2:39.96), while Swann knocked 2.6secs off to finish third (2:40.17), with the Fabias of both Hill (2:41.43) and Mark Maloney (2:41.99) moving ahead of Mallalieu. Read was a surprisingly low seventh, his car running in ‘limp mode’ after he misread the pop-off valve setting on the ECU.

Round 8 – Burger King Full Throttle, Event 1 (Motoring Club Barbados Inc)

Golden Grove to Harrow – August 20

Results

1st Stuart Maloney (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), 2m 39.21s

2nd Jeff Panton (Ford Fiesta Rally2), + 00.75s

3rd Rob Swann (Ford Fiesta Rally2), + 00.96s

4th Roger Hill (Skoda Fabia R5), + 02.22s

5th Mark Maloney (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), + 02.78s

6th Andrew Mallalieu (Ford Fiesta R5), + 03.03s

7th Josh Read (Ford Fiesta R5), + 03.56s

8th Ben Hartling (Ford Fiesta R5), + 07.42s

9th Paul Horton (Ford Fiesta R5), + 10.06s

10th Stan Hartling (Ford Fiesta R5), + 10.52s

Championship points

After round 8

1st Stuart Maloney 136

2nd Roger Hill 106

3rd Rob Swann 103

4th Mark Maloney 94

5th Jeff Panton 81

6th Josh Read 73

7th Paul Horton 57

8th Andrew Mallalieu 52

9th Suleman Esuf 26

10th Stan Hartling 12

11th Brian Gill 11

12th Ben Hartling 8