A strong finish in last weekend’s Rally Islas Canarias saw Peugeot UK’s Guy Wilks set two fastest times and score good points towards this year’s championship.
The start of the rally could not have been better for Guy. He quickly mastered the twisty go-kart circuit which made up this year’s first stage of the rally, setting the fastest time and taking the overall lead of the rally. A difficult run through the second stage saw Guy drop time to the rally leaders and drop to fifth place overall. A strong fight back on the third stage resulted in Guy and Phil setting the fastest stage time again in their Peugeot 207 S2000.
Stage four, the re-run of stage two was, again, not kind to Guy and Phil who dropped time to the rally leaders. “I lost confidence because the car was sliding at the rear and I couldn’t commit in the fast corners,” said Guy.
The resulting loss of time and a range of difficult conditions, including both fog and damp patches on the remaining stages, saw Guy and Phil finish the first day of the rally in seventh place overall.
With only four stages facing the crews before the end of the rally’s final day, Guy and Phil would need to drive their Peugeot 207 S2000 as fast as they could. A good run through the day’s first stage saw Guy move up from seventh to sixth and close the gap to fifth place to just 1.1s. A strong run through the next stage, which resulted in the third fastest time, saw the Peugeot UK 207 S2000 move into fifth place overall. Now in fifth, Guy and Phil set another strong time in the penultimate stage and moved three seconds ahead of sixth place, Skoda UK’s Andreas Mikkelsen. With just one more stage to run, securing fifth place overall was the best the Peugeot UK crew could expect.
At the end of the stage, Guy and Phil did more than enough as they finished 7.3s ahead of sixth place Andreas Mikkelsen and secured fifth place and became the second highest placed Peugeot 207 S2000. Like Guy, Monte Carlo winner and leader of the IRC drivers’ championship, Bryan Bouffier also had a difficult rally in his Peugeot 207 S2000, finishing in seventh place. The accolade of top placed Peugeot 207 S2000, however, went to Guy and Phil’s team mate, Peugeot Belgium-Luxembourg’s Thierry Neuville who finished in a well deserved third place overall.
“We lost our chance to win the rally on day one on the Gran Canaria stage which we did twice,” said Guy. “It featured two sections that were very fast with a sequence of flat-out sixth gear corners. Everywhere else, my Peugeot 207 S2000 performed perfectly but it tended to move about a lot more through the very fast sections. We had opted not to widen the track of the car which would have helped make the car more stable. It was a choice we made, and it’s a shame.”
Final Classification - Rally Islas Canarias
1. Hanninen (Skoda) 1h40mn38.1s2. Kopecky (Skoda) +1.5s3. Neuville (PEUGEOT) +8.2s4. Loix (Skoda) +16.7s5. Wilks (PEUGEOT)+48.3s6. Mikkelsen (Skoda)+55.6s7. Bouffier (PEUGEOT) 1m 00.6s8. Maglhaes (PEUGEOT) +1m 49.8s
Drivers’ championship standings
1. Hänninen, 33 points2. Bouffier, 313. Loix, 304. Wilks, 255. Kopecky, 22
Manufacturers’ championship standings
1. Skoda, 73 points2. Peugeot, 673. Subaru, 184. Proton, 165. M-Sport (Ford), 126. Honda, 97. Ralliart, 68. Abarth, 1
