Malcolm Jones and Rhys Jones on their way to victory on the Menai Rally Stages (Joseph John Gilbertson)

The 11th of June saw the Caernarfon and Anglesey motor club organised Rali Menai Stages take place on the Anglesey race circuit. This would make up the third round of the welsh tarmac championship. Among the 71 starters were a trio of club entrants, with the first being Malcolm Jones and Rhys Jones who were seeded at number 3 in their Darrian T90 GTR. Next up at 36 was Kevin Davies who had Sion Rowlands navigating for him, he would be using a Peugeot 207. Rounding off our trio at 42 was Keith Daniels in his Vauxhall corsa, he had Andrew Millington reading the notes. 

The rally would consist of 8 stages in and around the circuit, although unfortunately Kevin and Sion would only see five of these, as on the sixth stage the Peugeot’s clutch would break, they had been lying as high as twenty eighth overall after the second stage, but received a nominal time on stage three which dropped them down to fiftieth. They had climbed back up to forty-third when the clutch let go. 

Keith and Andrew had better luck and finished the rally in a very respectable twenty-first overall and second in class. They had been deep inside the top twenty for most of the day with some excellent times for their small engined car. 

For Malcolm and Rhys the rally couldn't have gone much better, as with an abnormally high attrition rate where every car from the top ten apart from their Darrian retired from the rally, they would manage to avoid trouble and go on to win the event outright with an impressive margin over 2 minutes and 2 minutes and 18 seconds. The hot weather and challenging layout kept them on their toes all day. The only drama they suffered was a spin that stalled the car on the second stage, from there they pushed hard to build up a comfortable lead which they held to the end of the event. An excellent result for a crew that still has plenty more left to give.

Many thanks to Joseph John Gilbertdson for the use of his image in this report.