With little time to rest after the previous day’s event in St Philip, the R5 circus headed north to the Barbados Rally Club’s Autumn Double Header Sprint on the popular Sailor Gully stage in St Peter, which was being scored on cumulative times, rally-style. It ran from the Sailor Gully hairpin to French Village, with a longer reverse direction from Mt Brevitor back down to the hairpin.

After a light shower of rain shortly before the start, Maloney set the R5 pace in his Fabia (1m 28.38s), with the Fiestas of Jamaica’s Jeff Panton second (1:28.54), Josh Read third (1:28.87) and Britain’s Rob Swann fourth. Despite feeling more comfortable after his strong Saturday, Panton left the road just ahead of the Orange Hill Plantation on the second run and retired, with Read now second ahead of the Fabias of Mark Maloney and Roger Hill. On the third run, Read pegged the leader back by eight-tenths and Swann moved into third ahead of Mark Maloney and Hill, which was the order at lunch; Stuart Maloney had just under 2secs on Read.

After a further short rain shower, Read topped the times in the first reverse run, with Stuart Maloney losing around 5secs to a stall mid-way through the stage, giving Read a 3secs lead. Despite Maloney being fastest on the remaining three runs, Read managed the gap to claim his second R5 Championship win by just six-tenths of a second, with Swann another 10secs adrift in third, strengthening his grip on second in the standings.

Maloney said: “With the uncertainty with road conditions, I don’t think I was hot out of the box but tried to build as I felt out the stage.” Read added: “I don’t think I had any more time left in me to match Stuart’s outright pace and my objective was the R5 rally and being consistent, instead of chasing an outright fastest time which paid off.”

Round 10 – Autumn Double-Header Sprint (Barbados Rally Club)

St Peter – August 21

Results

1st Josh Read (Ford Fiesta R5), 14m 07.81s

2nd Stuart Maloney (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), + 00.67s

3rd Rob Swann (Ford Fiesta Rally2), + 09.79s

4th Mark Maloney (Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo), + 11.76s

5th Roger Hill (Skoda Fabia R5), + 15.49s

6th Andrew Mallalieu (Ford Fiesta R5), + 19.30s

7th Paul Horton (Ford Fiesta R5), + 34.85s

8th Ben Hartling (Ford Fiesta R5), + 54.57s

9th Stan Hartling (Ford Fiesta R5), + 1:00.97s

dnf Jeff Panton (Ford Fiesta Rally2)

Championship points

After round 10

1st Stuart Maloney 178

2nd Rob Swann 131

3rd Roger Hill 124

4th Mark Maloney 120

5th Josh Read 117

6th Jeff Panton 89

7th Andrew Mallalieu 67

8th Paul Horton 66

9th Stan Hartling 31

10th Suleman Esuf 26

11th Ben Hartling 13

12th Brian Gill 11