Guy Wilks takes early Rally of Scotland lead after night stages
Guy Wilks leads the Rally of Scotland after the two after-dark runs through the Carron Valley stage that opened the penultimate round of this year's Intercontinental Rally Challenge
Peugeot UK driver Wilks has not won since his maiden IRC success on this round two years ago, when he picked up the victory while driving for Skoda UK following the disqualification of his Peugeot UK predecessor Kris Meeke for a technical infringement.
Wilks has had an extremely tough 2011 season so far and is keen to end his campaign on a high in Scotland - and he got off to a promising start with a pair of fastest times this evening.
Reigning series champion Juho Hanninen, back in the series after missing the last two rounds, is second for Skoda, 4.1 seconds down on Wilks.
But the star of the evening was P-G Andersson, who completed the stages just 0.5s behind Hanninen to put Proton in third overall.
Ireland's Craig Breen also flew - setting the second-quickest time on the second pass to put his Ford in an overnight fourth place.
Wilks' Kronos Peugeot stablemate Thierry Neuville belied his lack of gravel experience with an encouraging early fifth place, ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen (Skoda UK) and British driver Alastair Fisher - like Breen, a World Rally Championship Academy regular switching to S2000 for this event.
IRC championship leader Jan Kopecky completed the stages in ninth in the second factory Skoda.
Leading positions after SS2: Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Guy Wilks Kronos/Peugeot UK 10m46.7s 2. Juho Hanninen Skoda + 4.1s 3. P-G Andersson Proton + 4.6s 4. Craig Breen Kel-Tech Ford + 4.8s 5. Thierry Neuville Kronos/Peugeot Belux + 6.7s 6. Andreas Mikkelsen Skoda UK + 6.8s 7. Alastair Fisher M-Sport Ford + 7.4s 8. Patrik Sandell Skoda Sweden + 11.0s 9. Jan Kopecky Skoda + 11.8s 10. Bryan Bouffier PH/Peugeot France + 16.1s
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments