Castrol MEM Rally Team stable-mates William Creighton/Liam Regan and Meirion Evans/Dale Furniss remain locked in battle for the 2025 Probite British Rally Championship after a strong performance in their Toyota GR Yaris Rally2s on the JDS Machinery Rali Ceredigion (5/7 September) – with the Irish crew finishing fourth overall and taking home third-place BRC points and the Welsh duo recovering from a time-consuming early off to finish 10th overall and fifth in the BRC category.
The three-day event, held over 12 stages on spectacular closed country roads in mid and west Wales, proved just as tough as predicted – with very few crews surviving all 115 stage miles without a brush with the scenery.
One driver who avoided problems was William, who set a fast and consistent pace from start to finish. Driving with the BRC title at the forefront of his thoughts, the 27-year old Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy-supported driver pushed hard enough to keep in touch with the leaders but refused to take any unnecessary risks. Even when the rain arrived on the final afternoon, William remained inch-perfect to score more valuable BRC points and retain his series lead with just one round remaining.
After a number of fantastic performances on asphalt this year, Meirion was particularly looking forward to his home round of the BRC. Unfortunately, the Y Diafol (SS3) test was indeed ‘The Devil’ stage for the 30-year old Lampeter driver as on the second corner the car hit a patch of shiny asphalt and spun backwards off the road. Despite a big impact, there was only minor damage done – but with almost eight minutes lost all hopes of Rali Ceredigion victory and maximum BRC points were gone.
Meirion had to dig deep to put his disappointment to one side and focus on climbing up the leaderboard. Having dropped to 21st overall, he charged back to 14th at the end of Saturday (after SS8) and on Sunday regained his top 10 overall position. His fifth-place BRC points finish also maintains his challenge for the drivers’ title.
William Creighton said: “It’s been a consistent weekend, and a BRC podium is a good result on a rally like this. I said at the end of the last stage, it’s difficult because we can’t afford not to score British Championship points this weekend. We were trying at times, but it’s clear we have some work to do to match the times of the guys here this weekend.
“The team has done a great job again, both they and the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy have been looking after us. It’s good to get another strong finish now for the championship.
“We now have time to prepare for the Cambrian Rally and make sure we can be as ready as we can be. The aim wasn’t to come here to win the championship, there was a lot required to make that happen, so I’m happy to come away with strong points.”
Meirion Evans said: “We’ve had a lot of good results and a lot of rallies without any problems this year, but Rali Ceredigion was disappointing – although I’m no stranger to disappointment on my home rally!
“We hoped to have a good run, but we struggled trying to adapt the car to the conditions and we went a bit too safe on set-up for the first loop and it just didn’t work for me. We missed a bit of speed on the first stage on Saturday morning and then on the second corner of stage three the car went light over a crest, and on the shiny surface we spun off the road. We hit something quite hard, but miraculously we didn’t have that much damage. We got out of the car, looked around, and to our surprise thought that we could get going again – which we did, but only after we’d lost almost eight minutes. All hopes of a good result were gone, especially as we had to carry a few issues from that incident for the rest of the day.
“We calculated that we could recover and score enough BRC points that would at least mathematically keep us in contention for the title, and that was the motivation we needed to keep going and press on.
“It finally all started to come together on the last day, and we were putting in some strong split times through Nant y Moch until a big shower of rain hit us and the time tumbled again. I guess that just sums up our weekend!
“We did end on a high, as I scored my first Power Stage point of my career. I wanted a lot more out of the weekend, but I’ve been around the sport long enough to know that you have to take the rough with the smooth.
“It was a good result for William, the team worked exceptionally well to get both cars to the finish and we’re looking forward to the Cambrian Rally next month and the final round of the BRC.”
