Rallying on the Isle of Man can be tough and last weekend’s Chris Kelly Memorial Stages Rally was no exception.

Blackburn businessman John Stone described it as the toughest event he’d ever done.

“I didn’t think conditions could be worse than the previous week’s North West Stages but they were horrendous,” he said.

Competitors were faced with a combination of torrential rain and fog for Friday night’s set of six stages and Stone and co-driver Rob Fagg had a lucky escape when their Legend Fires Skoda Fabia WRC hit a bank.

They were fortunate that the impact only knocked the car’s tracking out which was put right before they faced Saturday’s longer 12 stage schedule.

Having finished eighth overnight, Saturday’s drying roads were more to Stone’s liking as he made steady progress up the leaderboard, eventu-ally grabbing third place on the final stage.

Stone said: “The car didn’t miss a beat and it was good practice for the Manx National.”

Minisport’s Daniel Harper and co-driver Paula Swinscoe from Withnell’s Rallytech had completed Friday’s leg ahead of Stone in their BMW Mini Cooper but a broken gearbox tooth left them with only fifth, second and fifth gears on Saturday morning.

It hampered their progress but a change of gearbox saw them climb up to sixth before disaster struck.

A patch of oil in a braking area saw the Mini fly off the road and hit a telegraph pole. The impact wrecked the suspension and ended their rally.

It was then left to Stone and Martin Cressey, who finished seventh, to uphold Minisport honours.

Andrew Sherrington and Bradley Johnson suffered from a lack of wet weather tyres and losing reverse gear on their Mitsubishi Lancer Evo4 but were rewarded with ninth overall for their efforts.

Blackburn husband and wife pairing Chris and Heidi Woodcock debuted a Proton Satria to good effect winning Class A and finishing 16th overall.

The Woodcocks are contesting both the Eurocars Motorsport Manx Stage Rally Championship and the SD34 MSG Championship, both of which the Kelly Memorial was a round.

Chris was delighted with the new car saying “It’s only 1400cc so it’s not the fastest car in the world but I think it will be more reliable than the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo6 we’ve rallied in recent years.”