She and Australian co-driver Anthony McLoughlin looked to have an Otago Rally third place in the bag going into the 37km Nenthorn test, with a buffer of nearly 50sec over fourth-placed Rangiora siblings Matt and Nicole Summerfield.
Disaster struck halfway through the stage when the front right tyre of Gilmour’s Suzuki Swift AP4 went flat for no apparent reason.
McLoughlin said that if they had had only 10km to go in the stage, they would have continued without changing it, but they still had more than that distance to travel.
The difficult terrain where they had to park to change the tyre meant they haemorrhaged time and finished the rally eighth in the New Zealand Rally Championship category.
"We couldn’t get the car up on the jack and there wasn’t a good area to do it, but we just kept persevering," Gilmour said.
