North Wales: Stuart Jones preview

Stuart set for Bulldog return

Former British Rally Championship front runners, Stuart Jones and Andy Bull, will return to the UK's premier rally series for this weekend's Bulldog International Rally of Wales, and will use a Giles Phillips supplied Mitsubishi Evo 9 for the Bala based event.

Welshpool based Stuart, who took a podium on last year's Jim Clark International Rally in his fast but fragile MG Super 2000, had been offered the use of Icelandic rally champion Daniel Sigurdarson's brand new Mitsubishi Evo 10 but delays with fitting the roll cage have meant that Stuart was forced to look elsewhere and will now use a full international spec GPM built Evo 9 for the rally instead.

We were really excited about building the Evo 10 but delays with getting the cage fitted have meant that we had to look elsewhere and Giles has done us a great last minute deal for the weekend.

At the moment we have the budget in place to contest the two gravel rallies but still need to find sponsors to see out the season, which, in the current economic climate is not going to be easy at all.

The main aim for the Bulldog Rally will be to win the Pirelli Star Driver nomination and to remind the nomination panel choosing the UK star driver for IRC Rally Scotland of what I am capable of.

The Bulldog International Rally of Wales is the opening round of the 2009 MSA British Rally Championship and is based in Llangollen, where all documentation and scrutineering checks will take place on Friday 27 March 2009. The rally itself will see crews tackle some of the classic Mid Wales stages, such as Dyfnant, Penllyn and Dyfi throughout the Saturday, with a central service area in Bala.

-credit: stuartjonesrallying.com