Garry Jennings and Shane McGirr suffered mixed fortunes at the M-Sport Stages Rally at the weekend, with McGirr claiming second in class and Jennings suffering a third stage accident that ended his hopes of success.

Jennings was using the two day Cumbrian based event, that was restricted to Ford cars only, as an opportunity to get some more competitive mileage in his Ford Fiesta, and he made a solid start on the forestry stages.

Driving a car that is of a lower specification than his main rivals, Jennings was hoping to stay within touching distance of the front runners, and after two stages was content to be inside the top ten and only five seconds off the pace of former British Champion Keith Cronin.

His challenge was effectively ended on stage three however, when he slid off on a right hand bend.

“You buy the pace notes and I hadn’t done a recce,” explained Garry. “It was a three right into a square right, and I was looking for the three right but it wasn’t there. I went into the square and I just tipped it into the ditch and she went over onto her roof and back onto her wheels.

“There was no big damage and I had a 12 foot bank to go up. I got the spectators to push us up at an angle and just when I was pulling into second gear to go back onto the road, there was a tree stump in the grass. We hit it square in the middle, stalled the car and knocked the windows out with the impact. The rally was as good as over then and we just put old tyres on for the rest of the rally and enjoyed it.”

Shane McGirr had a much more competitive run over the ten stages, losing out on a class win on a countback when he finished tied on time with Adrian Hetherington.

Long time rival Frank Kelly took the overall two wheel drive award after Shane suffered mechanical problems on his first event back, but despite those issues he managed to remain competitive with only three seconds separating the top three in the class with one stage remaining.

In the end Shane had to settle for second, and admitted frustration at the lost time from day one.

“We had an intermittent misfire all weekend and we couldn’t get it out of her on Saturday at all. We were haemorrhaging time all day,” he said.

“On the first stage I was off the boil myself. The notes were from a new provider we had never used before and I had a new navigator, and nothing was working but two thirds of the way into the stage things started to come together. After that we went reasonably well but we felt like we were losing five to ten seconds every stage.

“On Sunday, the first stage was the same and the car was still giving trouble, but then we put a new crank sensor in and although it wasn’t perfect, it was a lot better after that. We punched in three good times then. Those three stages gave us a chance, but we would have liked to think we would have been closer to Frank if we had a better run. We had two fastest times on Sunday which I was happy with.”

For McGirr the next planned outing is the Scottish Rally on 24th July, while Jennings is straight back into action this weekend, travelling to Wales for the Nicky Grist Stages, the second round of the British Rally Championship.