ROACH CROWNED YOUNGEST RALLY CLUB CHAMPION

Dropped-score rule settles hard-fought title race

Conor Roach has won the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Virgin Atlantic Driver’s Championship at the wheel of his Clubman class Peugeot 106; at 21 years of age, he becomes the youngest driver to win the title and joins his father, Derek, who was Champion Driver in 1991 and 1992, on the Club’s roll of honour.
  While he ended the season tied on 150 points with SuperModified 12 winner Rhett Watson (BMW M3), the dropped-score rule settled a hard-fought title race: each had failed to win his class only once all year, but Roach’s second place at Scotiabank King of the Hill was worth 13 points while Watson’s lowest score was 15 (any one of his six speed event class wins), so Roach prevailed by just two points.
  Twenty-one-year-old Roach, who was born on May 6, 1992 – mid-way through the second season his father won the title – has been studying in Canada since 2011, so was unable to contest the full BRC calendar last year. Of his 2013 campaign, he said: “I never considered the Championship seriously, since I was going back to school in September and there were two events left that I would have missed.
  “As it turned out, it all came down to the final double-header loose event at Black Bess. Even then, my father and I had an agreement that I would not miss any school for motor sport . . . however, as it turned out, the Monday after the event was Thanksgiving in Canada, a public holiday, so I was able to fly in and out without missing any school.”
  At age 10, Roach started his motor sport career in the Barbados Karting Association's (BKA) entry-level class for juniors; he finished second in the Sportsman Class in his first season and won the BKA's Sportsman of the Year Award for 'most improved driver' in 2003. Despite studying overseas over the next five years, he furthered his racing career and was the BKA's Champion Driver in 2007.
  The same year, now aged 15, he started sharing the Peugeot with friend and school-mate Dane Skeete; over the next three seasons he contested a number of Speed Events, before his first rally, the 2010 Karcher Summer Stages, in which he won his class with Rhett D’Andrade as co-driver. Since 2011, he has seen more frequent action, with Damien Johnson now his regular co-driver, notching up a consistent flow of class wins.
  For Watson, losing out on the Champion Driver title was doubly disappointing, as younger brother Logan had been in the same position last year; for Watson Racing, however, there was still cause for celebration, as Rhett’s SM12 class win made it a well-deserved hat-trick for the team, following Logan’s SM11 victories of the previous two seasons.
  Group N Champion Geoff Noel (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) finished third on 128 points, with Modified 6 and WRC-2 Champions Neil Corbin (Toyota Starlet) and Roger Hill (Toyota Corolla WRC) completing the top five on 111 and 110 points respectively; only Roach, Warren, Noel and Hill had scored in every round, while the absence of Roger Skeete (WRC-1 Subaru Impreza WRC S12) from the season’s final double-header helped Hill to edge him out and win the BRC 4wd Championship.
  After a season-long battle, although both were also missing from the final rounds, Josh Read (Toyota Starlet) beat Ian Warren (Suzuki Swift) to the BRC 2wd Championship by a margin of four points and the SM10 title by just two.

Virgin Atlantic BRC Driver’s Championship
Final positions after round 9*:
* indicates a lowest score has been dropped
1st Conor Roach (Clubman Chattel House Realty Peugeot 106), *137pts
2nd Rhett Watson (SM12 Oreo/Chips Ahoy!/Armstrong Agencies/Power King Batteries/Unknown Entity/Hankook Tyres/SpringBoard Marketing Platforms/In Support of Little Pink Gift  BMW M3), *135pts
3rd Geoff Noel (GpN Globe Finance/Kick Energy Drink/Sentry Insurance Brokers/Automotive Art/CIAC Air Conditioners/Mix 96.9FM/Dewalt Tools Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX), *128pts
4th Neil Corbin (M6 Nassco/Jason Jones/Auto Solutions/Castrol/Emtage Electric Toyota Starlet), 111pts
5th Roger Hill (WRC-2 Esso/Nassco/MotorMac Toyota Corolla WRC), *110pts
6th Josh Read (SM10 Stihl/Gliptone/Hankook/SDRR/