Osian Pryce admitted he “drove at no more than eighty-five percent” as he took the runners up spot on the opening round of the 2020 British Rally Championship.
Pryce ended the event second behind double champion Matt Edwards and the Hyundai i20 driver said after the Cambrian event that he and the car also have “a lot more to come” as he completed his first BRC event for over two years.
He spoke about the first round of the 2020 campaign: “Finishing second to Matt Edwards on his local Cambrian Rally is as good as a win for me. I haven’t driven at more than eighty-five per cent all rally, as this was the first time that I’d driven the Hyundai i20 R5 on gravel, so there is a lot more to come from both me and the car.”
“The stages were quite rough in places, and with no time to fine tune the set up of the car to my liking, I wasn’t prepared to give any more as I’m sure it wouldn’t have ended well! We set out to do our own rally and not worry too much about where we were on the leaderboard – that’s exactly what we did all the way to the finish, and it was undoubtedly the best approach to take.”
After an early spin on stage two, he managed to re-focus and went on to set a string of consistently fast stage times where he battled with both Edwards and his M-Sport Ford teammate Rhys Yates and Pryce went on to in the event 28.4 seconds behind the rally winner.
2020 also sees Pryce have a new co-driver alongside him in the form of Noel O’Sullivan and he commented on the duo’s debut together: “My first rally with Noel was great. Having never even sat in a car together before our short pre-event test, I’d say everything went very well.”
“There are plenty of places where we can improve, but it’s been a good day and it was great to be back competing in the British Rally Championship. We’re working hard to try and make it to the next round of the series in West Cork now.”
Round two of the 2020 British Rally Championship, the West Cork Rally, takes place on March 14/15.
