Less than a week after
extensively damaging his Lancia Stratos on the Ypres
Historic Rally, much to everyone's amazement, Kick
Energy rally driver Steve Perez was back in the thick of
the action in the legendary Italian rally car at last
weekend's Goodwood Festival of Speed and came away with
the Spirit of the Festival Award.
Kick Energy rally driver
Steve Perez saw his hopes of success on the Ypres
Historic Rally a week ago disappear with a high speed
crash which ended his event on SS7. Along with Ulster co
driver Stephen McAuley, the Chesterfield driver had made
a very steady start in the Lancia Stratos and held 22nd
after the opening few stages on Friday but soon made
progress on Saturday morning. However, it all ended in
disaster when at over 100mph, when Perez suffered a
suspected broken wheel which caused the iconic Italian
machine to veer off the road and collide with a bank.
Both crew were luckily
uninjured apart from bruising and Perez commented: "I
think I clipped a bank on the previous corner which must
have broken the wheel as I lost control as soon as I hit
the brakes. It was a big crash and the car held up well
but it means no points for us in the Gentlemen's World
Rally Class (G-WRC) and there's a huge amount of work to
do."
However thanks to Tim
Ashton and the team at BTR Preparation and the
Normandale's body shop, who worked round the clock
during the week to rebuild and re-prepare the car, they
wheeled out the iconic 1974 Italian machine to allow
Perez to take his place with motorsport's elite at the
event, putting the Stratos onto the rally stage where
Lancia's famous rallying name rightly belongs.
After a number of runs
around the special rally stage, Perez was delighted to
receive the Spirit of the Festival Award from Lord March
himself, in recognition of the effort Steve and his team
had put in to make sure they competed at the prestigious
event.
Perez said: "When we
saw the amount of damage, I thought there was no chance
of repairing it in time for Goodwood but the guys have
worked night and day to completely rebuild the car. We
knew there were so many fans hoping to see the car and
we just couldn't let them down so we did what we had to
in order to make sure we made it. A lot of people were
coming up to us asking if it was the same car we had
crashed and we had to assure them it was! But the
highlight had to be receiving the Spirit of the Festival
Award after three days of competition and the fact that
Lord March made the presentation himself made the whole
team justifiably proud. The car ran like a Swiss watch
too so all is looking good for the Midnight Sun Rally
next weekend and we can hopefully get a good result."
