Alan Scott defeated over 400 other competitors to take the win in the inaugural Legend Fires North West Stages eRally last weekend.
Set up following the postponement of the real-life North West Stages back in March due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Scott, driving a Citroen C4 WRC, won the rally by almost 2 and a half minutes ahead of Richard Suter in a Volkswagen Polo R5.
The three-day DiRT Rally 2.0 event used the asphalt stages in Germany and Spain in the game to try and replicate what would have been the Lancashire tarmac with traditional British changing weather conditions also playing its part along the way.
A delighted Scott said on his victory: “The event for me went relatively smoothly, I made a slight mistake on leg two where I collided with a hinklestein but thankfully got away with it!”
“With the current state of affairs in the world, it’s brilliant to have events like this going on to give us the motorsport fix we are all after. Credit to Chris and Phil (Boyle) for organising it and it was brilliant fun!”
While runner up Suter added: “I had a great battle for the top positions in class with a few of the other guys around me and they were setting some blistering times, making me take a few more risks than I wanted to try and protect my slim margin after leg 2.”
“I thought it was a great event and I’m really chuffed to have taken part and get a good result. I got to have some great fun with some really quick guys too!”
Third on the tarmac event went to Ryan Suter (no relation!) a further 24 seconds adrift with Richard Bliss, Gethin Jones and Lewis MacDougall completing the top six overall – all four drivers separated by just 34 seconds.
Just like in real-life the event saw a range of classes all taking part, with an overall learderboard being produced at the end of each day of action.
In what was a mostly WRC and R5 dominated rally, Alex Parsons broke the trend with the leading Class 2 entry in Ford Escort MK2. The leading historic competitor finished over two minutes ahead of his closest class challenger and took 20th overall.
The winning R2 entry was Lee Tindall, who driving a Ford Fiesta took a fine 24th overall after a close battle with Joe Hutchinson which saw them split by just 20 seconds after the event’s 21 stages.
Class 1 meanwhile was dominated by Rajesh Kankavlikar. Driving a Volkswagen Golf GTI, he took the victory by over two minutes ahead of Arfon Jones. Iain Huitson completed the podium.
Following the success of the one-off event, the creates of the virtual rally, Flat Shift Media, have teamed up with the organisers of the Malcolm Wilson Rally for a future project, with more details being released in due course over on their Facebook page.