A blue Mark II Ford Escort RS1800 still leads the 2016 New Zealand Silver Fern Rally at the end of the fourth day.
However, this time it is the car of Australian Stewart Reid and Kiwi co-driver Dave Neill, not the virtually identical car of the leaders at the beginning of the day, that of Meirion Evans and Lestyn Williams, from Wales.
Evans and Williams won the first of yesterday’s seven stages — the 12.23km Donald, west of Milton — and spent the rest of the day in a pitched battle with the other Mark II Ford Escorts of Reid and Neill, Keith and Mary-Anne Callinan, fellow husband-and-wife pair Brian and Anne Stokes, day winners Simon Tysoe and Paul Morris, and Kiwi pair Shane Murland and John Benton.
However, on the second-last stage, east of Mataura, Evans and Williams ran off the road, losing enough time in that and the final stage over Chittocks Hill and into Gore to gift the lead to Reid and Neill, albeit by just over 5sec.
It was a day of changing forces for several of the 40-plus crews still in the event, none more so than Derek Ayson and Gavin McDermott from Gore.
After taking the lead of the challenge category, for more modern or modified classic cars, in their Nissan-powered Mark II Ford Escort on the third day, Ayson was setting a cracking pace up front, only to run wide in a corner and roll a tyre off a rim through stage 24 near Waipahi.
Though he was able to change the tyre and repair some damage to the Escort’s rear brakes without incurring a time penalty, he lost enough stage time to slip back to second in the class behind archrival Dave Strong and co-driver Rob Scott in Strong’s late-model Honda Civic Type R.
Fellow Challenge category front-runners, Charlie Evans and Sue O’Neill, also ran off the road and lost time. Their Honda Civic was looking the worse for wear but was still mobile and running at day’s end despite a high-speed roll.
Dunedin builder Brodie Anderson and co-driver Brad Lyons, though still classified an impressive fifth in the Challenge class in Anderson’s Mark II Ford Escort, were in for a long night fixing crash damage sustained yesterday afternoon.
After a night in Gore, the field heads back to Dunedin today after stages in the Catlins and South Otago.
