SWANN, McNULTY TEAM UP FOR SOL RALLY BARBADOS

Despite a “very disappointing end” to their first outing together in Sunday’s closed-road Corbeau Seats Rally Tendring & Clacton in the UK, Rob Swann and Steve McNulty have confirmed today (April 29) that they are teaming up for Sol Rally Barbados 2019, the 30th running of the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event. They were forced to retire when a road section penalty cost them any chance of fighting for victory, which was claimed by Tom Preston and Carl Williamson, Preston’s first on a tarmac event, and just days before the Hippo Group Skoda Fabia R5 ships to the Caribbean.

With Swann’s Subaru Impreza WRC S12B already in Barbados, he was competing for the first time in a Mitsubishi Mirage R5, carrying the logos of regular backers Elegant Hotels, Blue Sky Luxury and Cygnet Plant. On a day of changing road and weather conditions, Swann said: “We started well, I was settling in to the car and the new pairing with Steve was working well. I chose the wrong tyre for the first loop but we were fifth, three seconds behind third, in a good position to fight in the afternoon. We went out on slicks for the second loop, again the wrong tyre, but got up to third by the next service.

“We were then handed a 10-minute penalty which forced us to retire the car as any chance of a good result had gone. The penalty was the result of being stopped on the road section to the second loop by a very angry officer, who was clearly having a bad day and wanted to make mine a lot worse! In his opinion I was being ‘inconsiderate’, so it was a very disappointing end to what was a great and well-organised event.”

Sol RB19 will run from Friday, May 31 to Sunday, June 2, with The Rally Show on the previous Saturday (May 25) followed Flow King of the Hill at its new location of Stewarts Hill on Sunday, May 26; on-line entries closed last Friday (April 26).

Since his debut in RB08, Swann has claimed five top six finishes and won Group N, ninth overall in 2010, in an Impreza N14; he also won GpN in Rally Jamaica, the only driver to do the double in the same year. He has finished second three times, to Jeffrey Panton for the past two years, also in 2014, the year of Roger Skeete’s last win.

McNulty, who has been rallying for more than 30 years, is competing in Sol RB for the fifth time since his first visit with long-time driver Dick Mauger in 2014, when they won Modified 6 in a Nissan Micra, 36th overall. He has always finished the event, most recently last year, when he won Group B3 in Robin Hamilton’s iconic MG Metro 6R4. Of the weekend in Clacton, he says: “It was not the result we wanted, but we got some seat time together, which was the main thing; sitting with Rob was a great experience and gave me a chance to raise my game and push myself.”