All four drivers who have won rounds of the 2024 Barbados Rally2 Championship sponsored by CIBC Caribbean and Ace H & B Hardware will go head-to-head one more time this weekend. They are entered for Sunday’s (December 1) Motorsport Island Stages at the Vaucluse Raceway in St Thomas in the eighth and final round of the national championship administered by the Barbados Motoring Federation (BMF).
Josh Read has won three rounds on his way to the top of the standings, where he leads first-round winner, Jamaica’s Kyle Gregg, by 21 points before dropped scores; in his first season in 4wd, third-placed Logan Watson has notched up one victory, while the championship’s youngest driver, Adam Mallalieu, has two wins to his credit.
Gregg (Ford Fiesta Rally2) set the pace in the Motoring Club Barbados Inc’s (MCBI) Spring Blaze Double-Header Sprint in March, beating Britain’s Rob Swann (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo) by two seconds, the results based on cumulative times for the seven completed runs.
With co-driver Mark Jordan, Read survived a late charge from Gregg to win round two, the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Shakedown Stages in April, by just 1.96secs, but still trailled the Jamaican race and rally champion by two points in the standings. Read made it back-to-back wins at First Citizens King of the Hill in May, when Gregg’s campaign faltered with a rollover on the second run; while he and island co-driver Orry Hunte were uninjured, they could finish only fifth, based on their first-run time.
While a tremendous effort by his support crew had Gregg’s badly damaged car readied in time for him to finish an impressive second in both rounds four and five at BCIC Rally Barbados, Gregg nevertheless slipped four points behind Read. And there was a further legacy of the incident yet to come, as his car did not return from a rebuild in the UK as early as anticipated, causing him to miss one round.
While Mallalieu’s Fiesta R5 also needed repairs after far less severe damage in the same KotH incident, the former Caribbean Junior Karting Champion was showing impressive pace. With experienced British co-driver Steve McNulty, a regular island competitor who has also sat with Swann, he was the dominant winner of round four, which encompassed the action on the Friday night and Saturday of BCIC RB24, although he ran wide into retirement on the Sunday, when Read claimed his third win.
Watson (Fabia Rally2 evo) claimed his first Rally2 Championship win in the MCBI Rally of the Sun & Stars in September with co-driver Kreigg Yearwood, benefitting from a number of absentees to jump to third in the standings. Finishing second allowed Read to increase his advantage in the standings, as Gregg was among those absentees.
The BRC Winter Rally last month reinforced how competitive the third season of this competition has been, with no fewer than five drivers taking stage wins, with Mallalieu and McNulty notching up a second victory. Gregg finished second, cutting his deficit in the standings to Read, who was third.
Over the season, the five special stage rallies have comprised 48 stages, Read fastest on 14, Gregg on 12, Mallalieu on eight; taken as a percentage of stages tackled, though, as only Read has been there for all, Gregg tops the list with 33 per cent (12 of 36), ahead of Mallalieu (30 per cent, 8 of 27) and Read (29 per cent, 14 of 48). Swann and Watson have each won six stages, while George Sherman (Fiesta Rally2) on the Rally of the Sun & Stars and Roger Hill (Fabia R5) on the recent Winter Rally have one each.
Sunday’s Motorsport Island Stages, scheduled to start at 9.00am, is also the final round of the BimmaCup BB and MCBI Championships. There will be four runs in each direction on a 5.7-kilometre stage within the Vaucluse Raceway, running from the southern entrance near the top of Hangman’s Hill to just inside the entry to the pits. The organisers expect the event to finish at around 4.00pm.
Barbados Rally2 Championship
Provisional points after round 7
1st Josh Read (Ford Fiesta R5), 132 points
2nd Kyle Gregg – JAM (Ford Fiesta Rally2), 113pts
3rd Logan Watson (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), 105pts
4th Roger Hill (Skoda Fabia R5), 97pts
5th Rob Swann – ENG (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), 95pts
6th Andrew Mallalieu (Ford Fiesta R5), 64pts
7th George Sherman – USA (Ford Fiesta Rally2), 64pts
7th Adam Mallalieu (Ford Fiesta R5), 61pts
9th Paul Horton – TCI (Citroen C3 Rally2), 37pts
For media information only. No regulatory value.
For further information:
please contact BMF Vice-President – Sport, David Williams – e-mail: [email protected]
web site: https://bmf-fia.com/