With it all to play for on the final round of the Subaru Group N Trophy, Scotsmen Alistair Tough and Alistair Mackay were fully aware of the result they needed on last Saturday's Bulldog Rally. At the head of the Group N and Subaru Trophy leaderboard any one of four crews could come away with overall honours so all was to play for.

The intense battle at the top of the championship left the TEG Sport duo with no option. They simply had to win Group N and the BARDON Aggregates/Ross-Shire Engineering sponsored team were quietly confident in the task ahead.

However, a wrong tyre choice on the first stage lost them some time but they started the fight back over the next series of stages when disaster struck on stage four. The Pirelli shod car left the road on a tight left hand bend and barrel rolled down a 200 foot ravine.

The crew emerged unscathed with Alistair Tough jokingly commenting "I'm sure he said Flat Right 3 " On a more serious note he described the incident.

" This was the second run through Garthieniog and due to the wet conditions, the stage was cutting up quite badly so much so that on the corner in question the bedrock was showing through. It was a Left 7 (70 degree corner to the left) but still nonetheless a fast corner. We were pushing hard and there were no issues with the car but mid corner we hit the bedrock which just made the rear end skip over a bit more than expected. I was not at all concerned and expected the car to pull us out of trouble and remember thinking 'I hope there's not a tree stump in there...' However, the loose mud and the sheer drop pulled the back end in and I realized we were going into what I thought was a ditch. At the last minute I tried to straighten the car up to try and avoid a roll, hoping the car would bounce back out. As soon as the car slid down into the ditch, it started to roll and I expected it just to be a quick roll, landing back on its wheels but could not understand why the 'thumps' were so slow and so hard. Little did I realize that we were actually dropping in between thumps! On the first roll the front of the roof came down a bit smashing the windshield so that when we were rolling we could not see out and were totally disorientated. On the second roll I said to Ally 'Where the hell is this thing going' and it rolled again landing on the passenger side. It was a heavy impact and it kept coming over onto the wheels. We thought that we had at last come to a standstill and were just about to unclip our belts when there was an almighty 'whump' and a really heavy impact on the floor. Unbeknown to us we had not been on the final roll but freefalling through the air – and still rolling !! As the car came round on the wheels for the final roll it reared up in the air and I was sure it was going to tip over backwards and land on the roof but it seemed to shudder in the vertical position for ages before falling back down and thankfully coming to rest on the wheels."

Ali continues:
"After a sigh of relief and gathering our thoughts, we made sure we were both OK, switched everything off and tried to get out of the car but it was wedged in a burn at the bottom of the ravine. I managed to get my door open enough to squeeze out and Ally climbed out through his smashed door window. We looked around and did not have a clue where we had come in from. Soon after we could hear another rally car and as he went round the same corner he sprayed stones over the edge and though we could not see them, we got our bearings. We were clambering about on the roof and getting stuff out of the car while trying to figure out how we were going to get out of there. The only way was to jump up from the roof, grab some tree roots and pull ourselves up on to a narrow ledge. Once up there I could see roughly where the car had come down and thankfully it had cleared away some of the very dense vegetation. So dense in fact that I doubt we would have been able to force our way through it. At this point some spectators who had heard the crash shouted down to see if we were OK and assuring them we were, we started the long climb back uphill to the forest track taking some 45 minutes to do so."

"This was probably one of the scariest parts. We had to stick to the path the car made on the way down and it was very loose underfoot – especially with race boots on, but also with each passing car we were hailed with a shower of stones and mud and whilst looking up hoped that none of them met the same fate as we had. There was no where for us to run had another car come over. Anyway, we got out with some bruises and it's a testament to the strength of the car. TEG Sport build an excellent car and the old girl kept us safe but it's totally wrecked. With the damage sustained TEG Sport would not compromise anyone's safety by rebuilding it, so it's a write off. The whole team feel like we have lost a friend, she was a great car and we had some stunning results in her"

The BARDON Aggregates/Ross-Shire Engineering car had dropped vertically some 200 feet and rolled at least three times. It took some twenty personnel, three medium size and three large recovery vehicles some seven hours to recover it. And bear in mind these recovery people, medical personnel and marshals are all volunteers, they too love our sport and the whole team thank them profusely.

TEG Sport are already starting to build a "new" car and it will be out on Rally GB in three weeks time so watch this space for further exciting news. www.rallyali.com www.tegsport.co.uk www.ancro.co.uk

Compiled and Distributed on behalf of Alistar Tough by Larry Carter, Cartersport Motorsport Media Services, PO Box 150, NORTHALLERTON, North Yorkshire DL6 3WZ