Welsh wizard Geoff Jones enjoyed a strong return to the British Rally Championship on last weekends Jim Clark International Rally, overcoming a lack of pre event testing to run inside the top ten all weekend long in his Subaru Impreza N14 supported by Jardine Lloyd Thompson.

Geoff, co-driven by young Sam Collis had not competed on a round of the MSA British Rally Championship since 1999. The Machynlleth based Jones was soon on the pace. A lack of pre event testing and the need to dust off the cobwebs saw the pair lose time to the front runners on Friday night.

Saturday saw Jones having fun, the former works Nissan and Proton driver set a string of top ten times all day and returned to Kelso for the ceremonial finish seventh amongst the British Rally Championship runners.

Well Sam and I had a lot of fun this weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the rally. I had never contested the Jim Clark before and it was an event that I’d always wanted to do.

The rally actually went very well. The boys at GJM have put together a well built and reliable car which, considering we were still working on it on Friday morning, did not miss a beat all weekend. Prodrive were a great help as well, sending a new ECU when the original one stopped working on Thursday night. And Sam was great, it took us a couple of stages to find a rhythm but he is a quick learner and we had a great time.

Mark Higgins and Bryan Thomas were the leading BRC crew driving a Subaru Impreza N11.