Bogie bags podium in Irelandposted in RSCOT10 | 04 | 2016
SCOT DAVID BOGIE boosted his hopes of winning a second British Rally Championship (BRC) when he finished on the podium in the Circuit of Ireland Rally, despite getting stuck in a hedge.
The 28-year-old from Dumfries, driving his CA1-prepared Skoda Fabia R5 (photographed above) and co-driven by Hawick's Kevin Rae in treacherous conditions, finished a comfortable third in the Belfast-based BRC event. The result also moved him to third in the championship.
But the five-times Scottish rally champ, who won the British title in 2011, came close to sitting out the second round of the BRC. Bogie only made the start line after his CA1 team repaired his Skoda after it suffered substantial damage in testing just hours before the start of the rally.
"Yeh, I've got to say a big thank you to the team for getting the car repaired in time to start the rally," Bogie, who finished fourth in the BRC season-opener in Wales last month, said.
"We didn’t get off to a good start by crashing on the practice stage, but it all came together and we grew in confidence after every mile.
"It was an eventful weekend as we made wrong tyre decisions, got stuck in a hedge and bounced off another.
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“I’m really pleased to have scored a podium in the British Rally Championship on my first Circuit of Ireland. On top of that we learned a lot, got some solid BRC points, won some European Rally Championship prize money and finished sixth overall.
"We registered for the ERC so we could do Qualifying and get a good starting position,but we spun in Free Practice and couldn’t do Qualifying because we’d damaged the radiator.
"But despite having to run further back than we’d hoped, we focused on the job in hand and got on with it.
We couldn’t push as much as we’d have liked to on day two, because with four stages, service, four stages, service you found yourself from time to time on completely the wrong tyres for the conditions.
We wanted to reach the finish, get some solid BRC points on board and continue to learn about the Skoda Fabia R5 and the Pirelli tyres, and we certainly achieved all of those things during what were two days of very difficult rallying conditions.
"So many people made mistakes over the three days, and for me it was all about staying out of trouble. With the settings we have now, we can go harder on the Tarmac rounds later in the year.”
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Bogie's performance was praised by team boss, Martin Wilkinson, Head of CA1 Sport.
"The stages turned out to be treacherously slippery and it was inevitable that drivers would be on the wrong tyres at some point – and as a team we rose to the challenge and performed extremely well.
"People forget that David hasn’t got an awful lot of Tarmac experience, so to perform so well and score such a good result in a new car was a magnificent achievement.”
Irishman Josh Moffett and co-driver John Rowan won the event, which saw four drivers hold the lead throughout the 14 stages.
The 23-year-old brought his Ford Fiesta R5 home 27-seconds ahead of the Citroen DS3 R5 of Northern Irishman Jonathan Greer, and Scots co-driver Kirsty Riddick.
Inverness driver Donnie Macdonald, co-driven by Andrew falconer, won the BRC National Rally Cup, which ran in conjunction with the main BRC event.
The Scot, who also won the opening round of the Scottish Rally Championship in February, now leads the BRC National Rally Championship heading to the Pirelli Carlisle Rally later this month.
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Jim McGll