Reigning Citroen C2R2cup champion Jason Pritchard survived an excursion into an infamous Kielder ditch to stage a storming drive to third in class in his Competition Car Insurance and North Road Garage backed Citroen C2R2 Max and in doing so picked up valuable points towards his 2009 campaign.

Builth Wells resident Jason and his Aberystwyth based co-driver Andrew Edwards had opted to tackle the second round of the 2009 MSA British Rally Championship with caution, as the Kielder forest complex is renowned for being unforgiving. Thus the pair were pleasantly surprised to complete the opening stage on Friday night with a seven second cushion over their rivals. However everything went wrong on the second stage of the day. About half way through the test the rear of the car stepped out of a rut and the nose was sucked into a deep Kielder ditch. Although there was remarkably little damage to the car it took a group of enthusiastic spectators nearly forty minutes to extract the little Citroen from its resting place. And then, to add insult to injury, the gear stick broke a couple of miles further on!

When you look at our times through the first stage and see that we were seven seconds quicker than anyone else in class, you do have to wonder what Saturday would have been like. But after that massive time loss in stage two Andrew and I agreed to just cruise to the finish and pick up valuable points.

“The actual incident is very puzzling because, even when you look back at the in car footage, there is no reason why we should have snapped around like that. It’s just one of those things, and I guess we can be lucky for ‘surviving’ a Kielder ditch! I’d like to say a massive thanks to everyone who helped pull us out of that ditch, it was a huge effort so cheers guys!”

The next rally for the talented Welsh pairing is the tarmac based Jim Clark International Rally. Based around the town of Duns, in southern Scotland, this high speed tarmac rally will see the debut of Jason’s brand new Citroen C2R2 Max, the car that he received as his prize for winning the 2008 championship.

A short youtube video can be found on our videos page.

Pirelli International Rally Overall Results

Class R2/ C2R2cup

1. Martin McCormack/ Phil Clark 1:17:44.6
2. Mark Gamble/ Steve Link 1:21:37.6
3. Jason Pritchard/ Andrew Edwards 1:52:54.0

Overall positions after Round 2/6 (best five rounds to score)

1. Martin McCormack   38
2. Jason Pritchard    36
3. Mark Gamble        34
4. Andrew Hockridge   15

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