Andrew and Anne Wood on their way to victory on the SAIC Granite City Rally 2002. 
Photo courtesy of AML Photography.

Despite question marks over reaching the start in time, the husband and wife pairing of Andrew and Anne Wood took a convincing win on the 2002 SAIC Granite City Rally. Reigning Scottish Rally Champion and former works driver Andrew Wood, had a battle against time to get the car ready for the start.

The Melrose based driver, who won the 2000 Scottish Rally Championship at the wheel of his Audi Quattro S2 was having difficulty finding parts for his 18-year-old car and they have had to be specially made. It was a tight time schedule to make the start and little or no time for shake-down testing.

"We are uprating the suspension, which means that the strut bodies have had to be adapted to fit," said Ann Wood, who is married to and co-drives for Andrew. "With a newer car this wouldn't be a problem, but with the Audi it wasn't so straight forward"

A trouble free run over 75 miles based on the forests of Kincardine saw the Melrose team's Audi Quattro S2 finish a convincing 21 seconds ahead of the rest of the field, having set fastest time on all but one of the six stages.

Serious contenders Jim Carty (Renfrewshire) and Dave Weston (Aberdeen) fell by the wayside with Carty putting his MG Metro 6R4 off the road in SS2 and Weston's Mitsubishi suffering a drive shaft failure on the first stage of the day.

This left the father and son pairing of Gary and Gordon Adam (Dollar) to target runner's up spot in their Mitsubishi, which they did to finish 38 seconds ahead of the battle for third place - a challenge which was also for top local spot.

Gordon Smith/Peter Carstairs (Aberdeen) and George McDonald/Ian Nicoll (Aboyne) swapped closely-matched times all day, but despite Smith completing the final stage ther seconds ahead, it wasn't enough to stop McDonald and co-driver Ian Nicoll giving their Subaru Impreza third place by 5 seconds.

Full Results

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Updated 20 May 2002
Webmaster - Jim Paterson