Copart Fiesta Trophy Winners Announced

Copart, M-Sport and DMACK created an incentive for Group N Fiesta ST owners to compete at the 2015 Wales Rally GB International. The exciting scheme  was put together to celebrate the final opportunity to compete in the UK round of the FIA World Rally Championship, as the homologation for the Ford Fiesta ST comes to an end this year, meaning it is the last year that a Fiesta is eligible to run in international events.

And the winner of the Fiesta Challenge was.…

John Pritchard, Copart’s Strategic Development Director has summarised this year’s Copart Fiesta Trophy (CFT) and Wales Rally GB (WRGB) event.

“Finishing a very tough Wales Rally GB completed a goal that I have had for twenty years when I first competed at the event and failed to finish due to mechanical issues and then a second non-finish in 2013 where I rolled my car.

The event which was generally thought to be the toughest event in years due to the rain and wind which led to almost half of the entry not completing the event. We had a difficult start to the event when I was told at 10:00pm the night before the start that the car had failed scrutineering along with the three other Copart Fiesta Trophy entrants, as had many other competitors including the works teams.

The mechanics worked through the night to fit new seat rails to the car, in order to complete the requirements of a particularly fastidious International Scrutineer, ready for the car to be re-scrutineered at 8:00 the following morning for the scrutineer to find other things he was not happy with, as he did with everybody else.

Finally the car was passed and we made the trip to Llandudno for the ceremonial start, where thousands of spectators attended.  It was strange eating in a restaurant in rally overalls whilst waiting for our turn to start!

We had a tough start due to the weather conditions and the fact it was the first time I have sat in a rally car since our roll at the 2013 WRGB.  We had a small problem on stage 5 that turned into a big time loss of over 8 minutes, however we resolved the issue and went on to set a few fastest time in the CFT to finish second.

Tim Rogers and Stephan Arndt had a worse start as their car did not pass scrutineering until 6:00 the morning of the event, so for him to go on to win the CFT was truly astonishing.

Tony Simpson and Ian Bevan led initially, before Tim took the lead on the first day, and the both of them swapped fastest times until Tony rolled his car into the trees whilst chasing Tim.  Luckily Tony’s service crew managed to repair the car to restart the next day and set some more fast times, to finish third Fiesta.

James Wesley and Glyn Thomas had a tough rally retiring on the first two days with gear box mounting issues, only to have another retirement on day three with another mechanical issue. His team also worked through the night to ensure they could restart each day.

Overall the event for the Copart Fiesta Trophy was a great success and the many thousands of spectators cheered us on what was the last time they will see these cars on an International event.

The times set by the Fiestas were impressive beating much faster four wheel drive cars on many stages.

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone who entered the Copart Fiesta Trophy along with a huge thanks to all of my sponsors, whom without the support of, none of this would have been possible. ”