SCOTS rally ace Garry Pearson and co-driver Niall Burns have now added the 2021 Motorsport UK National Rally Title to their Scottish Rally Championship crown.
The Skoda Fabia pairing put in a blistering performance to finish second overall in the penultimate round of the British Rally Championship last weekend.
The Borders driver and his Donegal co-pilot were untouchable in their class over the gruelling seven stages of the Cambrian Rally in the north Wales forests.
Afterwards, Pearson, from Duns, paid tribute to Burns and the entire team behind the Fabia R5 outfit, as well as the sponsors. The team’s impressive BRC drive came just a week after they had clinched the Scottish title.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Motor Racing Club held its last track action of the year at Knockhill. That saw a host of competitors in Classics, Fiestas, MINIs and Citroen C1s appropriately taking on the scary anti-clockwise format of the Fife circuit on Halloween.
The drivers faced some pretty challenging weather conditions but, true to the entertaining nature of SMRC meets, the season finale saw some new race winners once again.
And although some of the championships had already been decided, three titles had gone down to the wire.
In the end, Michael Weddell won the Scottish MINI Cooper Cup spoils, Ross Dunn took the Scottish C1 Cup and John Kinmond was crowned overall Scottish Classic Sports and Saloons champion.
An SMRC spokesperson said: “Thank you as always to our marshals and officials for all their efforts today. We were up against it to get the last race of the day finished before nightfall so it was a stupendous effort from those in race control and track side to fit everything in.”
The organisation is already planning an expanded programme for 2022 amid optimism that the worst of the coronavirus crisis will have passed.
So the club aims to revert to a full day race meeting format, introduce a new BMW Junior Championship, live stream events from Knockhill and once again visit Lincolnshire’s Cadwell Park for an away round.
This weekend will see the Kingdom Stages Rally held at Crail Airfield in Fife, which will be the final round of the Scottish Tarmack Rally Championship.
