Bogie fired up for British assaultposted in SRC24 | 02 | 2011
LESS THAN A week after starting his bid for a hat-trick of Scottish Rally Championships by winning the opening round in Inverness, David Bogie is preparing to launch his assault on the British Rally Championship.
The 23-year-old from Dumfries, acknowledged as the most talented young rally driver in Scotland, will complete the recce tomorrow for the opening round of the BRC, the Bournemouth-based Rallye Sunseeker.
And Bogie, who will again drive his four-wheel-drive Mitusubishi Lancer Evo IX in Saturday's 67-mile event, is having to come to terms with being seeded No1 for Britain's top rally title.
"Yeh, it's a wee bit of pressure," Bogie, who finished fourth in last year's RallyScotland, the penultimate round of the Intercontinental Rally Championship, admitted today.
"I'm seeded top four-wheel-drive car, so I guess everyone thinks we'll do well. Now I have to make sure I go out and deliver the goods on Saturday.
"The problem is, it appears whenever I've started a BRC event in the past I've been plagued by bad luck — last year we had a sensor problem, then a burst sump — but we've put a lot into the preparation this year and there's no reason why it shouldn't all go to plan."
Bogie, who will again be co-driven by Hawick's Kevin Rae, finished first GpN car and first Mitsubishi in the rally when it was part of the Mitsubishi Evo Championship in 2008, the year he went on to lift the Evo title.
Now the Scot is hopeful he can maintain the form which saw him dominate last weekend's opening round of the SRC, the Snowman Rally in Inverness.
"It was good to start the year off with a win," Bogie continued. "I feel settled and I feel comfortable with what I'm doing. That's the first time I've won the Snowman, so hopefully it augurs well for the year. I've won the Scottish title twice, but never the British, and I want that title on my CV this year.
"We settled into a good pace early on in the Snowman, and that's what we'll need to do again on Saturday in the Sunseeker. It's going to be tough because there are a number of guys who will make it difficult for me, but I'm really up for it."
In addition to Belfast's Jonny Greer, who will be driving a Skoda Fabia S2000, Bogie faces stiff competition from fellow Scot and SRC rival Euan Thorburn. The Duns-based driver, in a similar Evo IX, will be hoping he can again put pressure Bogie.
"We pushed David pretty close in the Snowman, in fact we were level on times with just two stages remaining," Thorburn explained, "but we were second on the road on the penultimate stage and we struggled for grip in the soft muddy conditions.
"In the end we dropped 12 seconds, and that was the rally gone really. We opted just to keep it steady through the final stage to guarantee second place. But we all start from scratch again on Saturday and I think it'll be a real ding-dong battle again."
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Jim McGill
Photo: LindsayPhotoSport