Rallying - Cumbrian Wilson fifth in Portugal (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Rallying - Cumbrian Wilson fifth in Portugal

9:01am Monday 28th March 2011 in Sport

BRITAIN'S Matthew Wilson scored his best ever Portuguese result this weekend after he and fellow Cumbrian Scott Martin finished fifth overall in their M-Sport Stobart run Ford Fiesta RS WRC.

The 24-year-old’s previous best finish at Rally de Portugal was sixth and this weekend’s result is Wilson’s first top-five finish since last year’s Jordan Rally, proving that Britain’s top WRC driver is adapting well to driving Ford’s new Fiesta RS WRC.

Throughout Friday’s repeat loop of three stages totalling 132.41 km, Wilson and team-mate Henning Solberg battled it out for fifth position and only 4.7 seconds separated the Fiesta RS WRC team-mates as Solberg held fifth at the end of the day.

However, after a quick time on Saturday’s opening stage, Wilson moved up to fifth – 7.5 seconds ahead of his team-mate.

Then on Stage 11, Solberg’s Fiesta RS WRC suffered power steering issues which was closely followed by a puncture on Stage 12, losing the Norwegian three minutes and widening the gap between the two drivers.

Despite a difficult afternoon, Solberg and co-driver Ilka Minor battled on and pulled into the end of a difficult second day sixth overall.

Wilson moved further up the WRC leaderboard and into a career-best fourth place when Mikko Hirvonen suffered problems with rear suspension on the day’s closing 22.56 km stage.

Wilson finished fourth at 2007’s Rally Japan but fourth place would be the best ever result with current co-driver Scott Martin.

By the end of the second day, the Briton was just over 60 seconds from a podium position. Sunday proved relatively trouble-free for Wilson and a cautious driving approach consolidated his fifth place finish.

Wilson said: “We found a comfortable pace on the first stage this morning but then we backed off - I just didn’t want to take any risks.

"If we’d known Mikko [Hirvonen] had problems on the same stage, then we probably would have pushed harder but it was difficult to know how to play it.

"I think the incident in 2009 was on the back of my mind when we were running fifth on the final day and then I crashed but I’m happy with how everything has gone generally.

"We were able to increase the pace when we needed to and then yesterday we had the luxury of playing things a bit cooler after Henning has his puncture.

"The result has made me really determined to try and secure more WRC rounds later on in the season and this is what Scott and I will be concentrating on over the next couple of months.”