Rally Cedar Hill - 17th September 2006
Photography by Devi Nath, Gerrard Wilson, Justin Wallace and Cristian Cozier
Article courtesy: TTRC

The weather was not only the scorching item on September 17th. The Stag/Ultra/Josef’s Evolution 6 driven by the Ainsley Lochan/Justin Wallace team blistered the eight stages at Cedar Hill in the Southland.

The hot sun found favour with the Trinidad & Tobago Rally Club fans, who came to witness their favourite drivers, practically eat up the 4km stage.  Eight stages were run, four forward and four in the reverse.

And eat up the stage, they did, led by Ainsley Lochan and his navigator Justin Wallace. Lochan whetted the fans’ appetites by finishing the first stage in 2 minutes and 13 seconds. He was followed by Harold Morley - substituting for Barry Mckenzie - and Max Jallai driving the Castrol/Rallymac Sweet Tamarind Mobile EVO 6, with 2 minutes 20 seconds.  Next on the hot stage was Colin Khan’s/ Richard Ramsingh team Esso/Flowertime Subaru in 2 minutes 25 seconds.

The Rezan Mohammed/Arshad Mondro team, winner in the 2-wheel category, driving their Lancer Turbo, showed their usual spunk by finishing in 2 minutes and 33 seconds, edging out Dave Rampersad and Shiva Mahabir in the 4-wheel category by 1 second in their Tire Clinic sponsored Evo 2. For the rest of the day, these two teams would interchangeably nip at each other’s wheels.

You can’t keep good rally men down - Shelford Robinson/Rajesh Ganar, a valiant veteran team, lost the right wheel of their Tire Clinic Sunny in the first stage and came back fighting in the 2nd stage, ran off at checkpoint #5, came again in the 4th stage only to get a flat and had to sit out the rest of the rally.

Unfortunately, the Harold Morley/Max Jallai team experienced gearbox problems and had to retire after the 2nd stage.

Ainsley Lochan continued to scorch the remaining stages with blistering times consistently reducing his times to the best of 2 minutes 7 seconds in the last forward stage and 2 minutes 9 seconds in the last reverse stage.

Both the Vishal Dhanraj/Ian Rouse Esso sponsored Subaru Impreza team and Daiman Publishers sponsored Toyota Corolla Franklyn Seegobin/Kurt De Freitas team were both consistent in their times across all eight stages.

Gutsy newcomers, James Harris/Nishard Mohammed, flipped their Nissan Sentra B13 back over front in kamikaze style and rolled in the 1st reverse stage in the afternoon and came back with dented top to finish the stages.

The Cedar Hill Stage continues to be the best Rally Stage in Trinidad, 4km in length along a very smooth and twisty wide roadway.

GROUP PLACING

Group 3A

Group 1-4

OVERALL

Photos: Page 1 of 8