Rochdale rally driver Steve Brown achieved an excellent result on last week’s Manx International rally when he finished third in class and 25th overall in his Mintex Racing, Fuchs Titan Race, 710 Oil's, PIAA and Sabelt UK-backed Nissan Micra 1300.
The rally started on Thursday night with six stages in atrocious conditions on the Isle of Man’s closed public roads. Heavy rain meant the roads were extremely slippery and the crews were not helped by thick mist on many of the stages. Despite the weather Brown guided the Micra to 4th in class and 39th overall at the overnight halt.
Day two had a punishing schedule of 13 stages including two runs of the hugely popular stage through the centre of Castletown. With conditions much improved from day one Brown put in a strong performance to move up to third in class and 31st overall.
The event concluded with 8 stages on Saturday with the final stage being the very challenging 13 mile “Classic” stage which saw the crews tackle the tricky Druidale road in the mountains before heading down into Douglas and finishing outside the TT grandstand. Brown maintained his third in class position and gained a further 6 places on the overall leaderboard to finish 25th.
“It was my second time competing on the event and once again it was a brilliant rally to be part of,” said Brown. “The organisation was good and, as ever, the stages were fantastic – a real challenge. At over 190 competitive miles the event was much longer than a usual rally and it’s a great achievement to get to the finish.”
“We suffered a little with a clutch judder at the start of the stages on the Friday and Saturday but once the car got going it was fine. Other than that we had no problems and we completed all 27 stages with no damage to the car.”
“Thanks to all my sponsors whose support was vital in helping me contest the rally, thanks also to the P.A.C.E. team for looking after the car on the event and to Paul Stringer who did a fantastic job navigating me around the stages.”
Brown is now considering returning to the island for the Pokerstars rally in November.
