Second place a good start in China for McShea and Clarke

Driving a Skoda, the pair took an early lead over main rival Mark Higgins on the two opening super special stages, giving them a slender lead of just over a second at the end of the short first day.

McShea, a former production World Rally Champion, was one of the main attractions of a rally which drew spectators in huge numbers. “We were an hour and a half late getting to the super special because of the crowds,” explained Marshall Clarke. “Twelve kilometres away from the stage the roads were blocked with cars and spectators. There was a massive crowd.” The local pair were driving the same car as they campaigned last year but the Subaru of Higgins proved too powerful to contain on the early stages of day two. “The stages on the second day suited Mark’s car because of the turbo and the torque,” said Marshall. “There were so many uphill hairpins that he was able to get the jump on us and he took quite a bit of time out of us. It wasn’t that we weren’t trying but there was something like 30 uphill hairpins at the start of the stage. Then the stage was repeated in the afternoon and he did the same on us again and there was nothing we could do.” The weather on the event, which was held a three hour flight west of Shanghai, virtually ended McShea’s hopes of a fight back, as treacherous conditions on the narrow stages in the earlier recce led to the cancellation of two of the final day’s four stages.

“The event was plagued with problems for the organisers,” acknowledged Marshall. “The weather had not been too kind and the recce had to be cancelled on one stage because people were getting stuck and it wasn’t possible to get through it. The morning they were due to run we recced them in the rally car and we were asked our opinion if they should run or not. The general consensus was that they shouldn’t, because we only got one pass on the recce and it would have been too dangerous. They were very narrow and it just wasn’t feasible, especially for the two wheel drive cars.” Despite only having two stages on the last day Niall and Marshall continued to push hard, but they could not reel in leader Higgins. “Last year we blitzed him on the third day of a rally and ended up winning by a couple of seconds, so he knew not to back totally off,” said Marshall. “We kept improving the set-up of the car and kept pushing just to see what the limit was, and we set a couple of quickest times on day two. It was a good enough start and nice to get the championship points in the bag. The team were happy and I think it is going to gel into a good year.” The next round of the championship is Rally Beijing, which takes place in the shadow of the Great Wall of China in the middle of June.