Niall McShea and Marshall Clarke rounded off their rally season with victory on the last round of the Chinese Rally Championship.  It is the pair’s second consecutive win in the series but unlike their previous success which relied on two late retirements to promote them to the top spot, this time they led throughout the event, holding off a fierce challenge from Mark Higgins to take the win.

“It was a good battle the whole way through,” admitted Marshall, who has navigated for McShea throughout the championship. “We were battling for seconds with Mark Higgins the whole rally.” After the first day’s stages the local pair held a slender 2.7 second advantage over the former British Champion, and they set about extending that lead on day two.

The first stage saw them increase the gap to almost ten seconds, and they edged out another few seconds before Higgins hit problems on the penultimate stage. Engine problems meant he lost 28 seconds on the stage, and McShea and Clarke were able to ease around the final Super Special stage to round off the championship with back to back wins.

It marks the end of a relatively successful campaign in their Skoda.

The early events were part of a development process with the car and were plagued with mechanical problems, but despite this they led two events before retiring and managed two first places and a second in the five round championship.

For Marshall the event came just days after a disappointing Rally GB with Keith Cronin. The pair crashed heavily in their Citroen and although they got going the next day the time loss cost them the Citroen Top Driver Award.

Marshall was still feeling the aftereffects of that accident in China.

“I was sort of running on adrenalin to be honest, and I probably shouldn’t have been doing the rally at all,” he admitted as he reflected on the accident in Wales. “I was walking around for 45 minutes after the crash and then I went downhill. They suspected I had broken my pelvis, and that is why they brought me to hospital. They also thought I had internal bleeding because my blood pressure dropped significantly and they couldn’t get me stabilised. I had a full CT scan and they held me until every specialist had looked at my scan before releasing me. They kept me in for about 5 or 6 hours, and then the following morning I had to go to the FIA for another medical.” Marshall’s globetrotting season, which included over 80 flights to Europe, America and the Far East, finally came to an end with the win in China.