Sixth placed Alastair forced to retire

Editorial Department • Published 26 Nov 2009 09:41 0 Comments

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Alastair Fisher's season ended in disappointing fashion after he failed to finish the Rally of Scotland last weekend.

The event was the final round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge and attracted a high quality field including the S2000 cars of newly crowned champion Kris Meeke and former British Rally Champion Guy Wilks, but Alastair's main adversaries in the more traditional Group N machinery came in the form of reigning Mitsubishi Evo Challenge Champion David Bogie, Jonny Greer, Dave Weston Jr and Icelandic entrant Daniel Siguroarson.

A third fastest overall time on the second super special stage on the opening evening of the rally left Alastair ideally placed as the cars headed into the main forestry stages in atrocious conditions on Friday morning, and the Trillick driver confirmed his position as one of the fastest of the Mitsubishi drivers with impressive stage times on stages three and four, despite what appeared to be minor problems.

"We had a good run over the two super specials and on the first stage on Friday morning were second quickest in group N," said Alastair. "On the second stage the conditions were very wet and the car was aquaplaning on the mud. We had to work hard to get traction especially on the faster corners, and we clipped a log, bending the wishbone and losing about 10 or 15 seconds. On the next stage we were quickest Group N, although we had a puncture for about six kilometres of the stage."

His performances had left him lying sixth overall, narrowly behind Weston Jr and Bogie, and ahead of the works S2000 Peugeot 207 of Adam Gould, who had been controversially selected for the lucrative one-off drive ahead of a panel of drivers that included Monea's Niall McShea.

The next stage was to signal the beginning of the end of Alastair's challenge however. "A mile into the stage we found we had no brakes whatsoever, either foot brake or handbrake," he explained. "I would say that was a result of the puncture damaging the back brake calliper, although we had a 30k road section all the way to the stage and it was fine. Luckily it happened on an uphill hairpin right so we were able to get it round, but we retired the car in the service area."

Despite a disappointing end to the year Alastair has had a very successful season, with third overall in both the British and Irish Championships. He is now set to consider his options over the winter before deciding on his plans for the 2010 season.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 26 Nov 09

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