LOCAL drivers Rob Barry and Alan Whittaker produced an oustanding drive to finish seventh in the Rally of Lebanon.

They were invited to compete in the 24th running of the event which began in Beirut as part of the Middle East Championship, with hopes of joining the World Rally Championship.(WRC)

Dave Richards, the World Rally supremo and also owner of Prodrive which runs cars for the present leader of the WRC Richard Burns, was assessing the Lebanon Rally for inclusion in the WRC at some future date.

Barry and Whittaker were part of a three car Mitsubishi Lancer team running in the rally and included drivers Manfred Stohl from Austria and Chris Thomas from Cyprus, all of whom were invited by the organising committee of the Rally of Labanon to compete in the tarmac rally. They formed part of an international contingents of competitors, which also included French, German and many countries from the Middle East. Mohamed Ben Sulayam the present Middle East champion was competing in a British prepared WRC Ford Focus.

Both Bolton drivers are vastly experienced in foreign competions and were invited as English representatives.

Creditable

Naturally they were both concerned about the reception they would receive in Beirut, after all the problems that has afflicted the country in recent times, but their fears were unfounded. Lebanon is a very pretty country, especially up in the mountains where the rally stages were based, and the Lebanese people were some of the warmest and joyful people they had met.

The rally started at 8am and was run over eight stages finishing at nine in the evening.

Barry said that the rally was one of the hardest he had competed in, the tarmac was unique in that it was slippery as ice in places and exceptional good grip in other parts, and it took them the first day to get the suspension right for the conditions. At the end of the day they were in ninth place overall and that was not bad considering this was the first visit.

Day two consisted of 11 stages and were all based on the tight twisty mountain tarcks of Lebanon. Barry with a better set up, and the car performing well started to put pressure on the leading cars. The Mitsubishi never missed a beat and his hard attack on the last three stages managed to lift them up to finish a very creditable seventh overall.

This was an outstanding achievement, when more than half the cars on the rally failed to finish on a truly international rally and a great credit to both the driver and co-driver for an outstanding performance on ever changing road surfaces. The rest of the Mitsubishi team had mixed fortunes, with Manfred Stohl retiring on stage four and Chris Thomas finishing 4th overall.