Colin Appleyard (Suzuki) backed Luke Pinder, from Shipley, West Yorks and Leeds based co-driver Peter Scott drove to a fine second position in the Swift Sport Cup on last weekend’s Jim Clark International Rally.

The team had scored a major achievement in just making it to the start line. Pinder had completely rebuilt his Swift Sport in the five week gap between the Pirelli rally in April and the Jim Clark. The car had suffered extensive, but no structural, panel damage on the Pirelli and Pinder had no choice but to rebuild the whole car. “It has been a long few weeks with late finishes on top of a full day’s work in the family office removal company. We finished bolting it back together at 6.00 pm on Thursday evening before driving up to Kelso and arriving in the early hours of Friday morning.”

Despite the lack of sleep Pinder came out fighting and was just 1/10^th of a second behind local driver Gordon Nichol at the end of  the first stage. “I think that probably surprised a few people, given our spectacular exit from the Pirelli. Most people expected us to play ourselves in”.

“To be fair, given our preparation I think 2^nd in the Swift Sport Cup was a fantastic achievement”, added Luke. “Prior to the shakedown we had not even driven the Swift on tarmac and the car gave us few problems all weekend, apart from losing the clutch on the penultimate stage and cooking the brakes on the Friday night stages! We set 6 fastest stage times (the same as local winner Gordon Nichol) and had an excellent scrap with Syko (Richard Sykes)”.