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Jones podiums Trackrod

Stuart proved once again that he is one of the United Kingdoms top rallying talents......

March 30th 2009

Welshpool based Stuart Jones became the first British driver to win the very specialized Rally Reykjavik in Iceland last weekend.

The 30th International Rally Reykjavik consisted of 260km of stages over 3 days, made up of a mixture of tarmac and gravel stages varying from super smooth and fast Finnish style roads to the famous 39 km rocky and twisty Kaldidalur stage which saw the crews climb to over 1000m above sea level.

 A new car, a new co-driver and completely new stages saw Stuart elect to make a cautious start and after the opening leg 24 year old Jones was lying second overall and 17 seconds adrift of the leader.

Back at the service park Stuart set about making a few suspension changes to improve the Evo X’s stability for the faster stages of leg two. "The car was moving around a little too much at high speed which made it difficult to commit to my notes. But I am happy with my position going into leg two as there is a lot of loose gravel tomorrow.”

Fastest by four seconds on the opening short tarmac test in the morning followed by equal fastest on the following keeping pressure on the leader as the crews headed for the huge 39km Kaldidalur stage. A time 20 seconds quicker than anyone else combined with the overnight leader Jón Bjarni suffering a puncture, saw Stuart return to the midday service with a two minute lead. Jones then set out about extending his lead and a big attack on the same 39 km stage run in the opposite direction saw the former BRC challenger more than double his lead to over four minutes! “That stage is just awesome, we had a great rhythm from the start and pushed hard all the way through the stage. We’re in a good position now but were only half way through the rally so there is still a lot to do"

A string of stage wins during the afternoon saw Jones end the day with a lead of over five minutes. "It has been a great day for us, Isak was great on the notes and with his experience of the stages he was able to warn me of the bad corners which really allowed me to attack the stages build this lead!"

The final leg was made up of eight stages and Jones continued his impressive pace to take the rally win by exactly eight minutes.

Stuart commented "the SJR run Evo10 is such a well balanced package now, it was easy to find a good pace on all the different stage surfaces and really responded well the harder i pushed it, the stages were very demanding on the car and it didn't miss a beat which made the win so much easier"

A huge thanks to Daniel Sigurdarson for the loan of the car the organisers and marshals from the Icelandic motor club, BIKR, for the invitation to compete and the assistance they gave to make this possible.

Earlier News

Catch up on Stuarts news and press releases from earlier this year.....

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