Alastair Fisher finished his Junior World Rally Championship campaign with victory on Rally GB to secure second place in the championship.

The Trillick driver took the lead of the WRC3 category on the first stage of the Wales based event and was never headed, as he cruised to victory with almost a minute to spare. It caps a year that started with a disappointing non finish in Portugal when he slid off the road with victory in his sights.

With points from all six rounds to count Alastair was never able to haul back the dropped points and Frenchman Stefane Lefebvre claimed the title, but Alastair fought back strongly in the closing rounds, taking maximum points on each of the last two events, Rally France and Rally GB, to take second place in the championship.

“It was a good end to the year,” admitted Alastair. “We made a mistake at the start of the year but we can’t dwell on that too much. We were happy with how it went. It was a relatively good year.” Going into the final round of the series, the battle for second place in the championship was a three way fight between Fisher, Koci and Giordano, but Alastair made a great start through the loose surface Welsh forests.

He posted the quickest WRC3 time on stage one, and further increased his lead over the following stages, despite not being totally happy with the car.

“We had a good clean run over the first two stages,” he said. “We maybe weren’t just 100 per cent happy with the set-up of the car and made a couple of changes and we managed to go 14 seconds quicker the second time through Hafren which was the longest stage of the rally, stage 3. Then we took another 10 on the next stage so we had a lead of 23 seconds at the first service.” Alastair’s position was strengthened even further on the next loop of stages when rival Koci slid off the road and lost over a minute before being able to get the car underway again, leaving Alastair 80 second ahead at the end of day one in his Citroen.

With a good advantage over the rest of the competition, survival was Alastair’s number one priority for the remaining two days. “On that rally you have to concentrate hard, not abuse the car and stay out of trouble,” he said. “The stages were very rough and slippery. We had a burst front right shock on the last two stages on Saturday in the dark which cost us some time but we kept the time loss to a minimum so we still had a minute and 15 second going into the last day, and we were able to hold on and take the win.” Alastair and co-driver Gordon Noble eventually finished one minute and eighteen seconds clear of the chasing pack, earning maximum points and securing second overall in both the Junior World rally Championship and WRC3.

With the season now over for Alastair his attention will focus on securing a drive for next season. Moving up to the competitive WRC2 category is one possible option, but he admits nothing has been confirmed yet. “There is nothing set in stone yet,” he said. “We will have to see what we can do over the winter.”