Rally Yorkshire: David Meredith summary

Yorkshire woes for Meredith

29 year old David Meredith experienced a very frustrating, and rather short, International Rally of Yorkshire over the weekend after a front wheel parted company from his Mitsubishi Evo 9 on the fourth stage of the event.

Dolgellau based David, the reigning 'stars' British Rally Champion had a frustrating lead up to the event when mechanical problems hampered his recce. Despite this unforeseen hiccup the rally itself began well enough. A time just outside the top 10 through the opening stage was more than David had expected after lacking confidence in the high speed sections. Top 10 times in the next 2 stages showed that David was not dawdling but then on Stage 4, Cropton, it all very nearly went horribly wrong. As David was braking for a left hand bend, the right front wheel suddenly parted company with the car and the Evo narrowly missed a rather large tree as the reigning champion struggled to bring the car to a halt.

Although both David and co-driver Jemma Bellingham were shaken by the incident David put the wheel stud failure down to over torqueing of the studs.

I've never seen a failure like this before. We are sending the broken studs away to be examined but I'm confident that it was a one off issue. It's a pity that this forced our retirement though because we were just getting into the groove of things. Yorkshire is a really high speed event and the levels of grip were making life rather interesting but I'm confident that we could have had a good run!

David will now re prep the car ahead of his world rally debut, the Wales Rally GB in December.

-credit: dm