TWO OF BRITAIN’S most consistent Sol Rally Barbados supporters will jointly clock up their quarter-century this year, when Andrew Costin-Hurley makes his 16th appearance in the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) premier event and Nigel Worswick participates for the ninth time.
And there’s an even closer link between the two this year than just their common history of campaigning Ford rally cars for many years as Costin-Hurley’s wife Melissa will sit with Worswick on one run of Flow King Of The Hill, as one of two successful bidders in an online charity auction last year.
Costin-Hurley will again drive his self-designed and built Ford Puma Evo, in which he has won Group B five times. This year it is sponsored by Earl’s Performance Hoses, KB Tyres, Trumbles Guest House and Clubman Motorsport, the last being a rally and motor sport safety equipment supply business launched last year by another Barbados regular Rob Brook, clocking up his tenth visit as he returns to the Puma as co-driver. Former F1 engineer “Rob is an excellent navigator and my partnership with him has led to my best finishes in Barbados,” Costin-Hurley said.
Worswick will return with his Ford Escort WRC, backed by Ullyetts Machine Shop Service, in whose Barbados workshop the car has spent a fair few nights in recent years, and UK businesses Rallytech Composites, Worswick Engineering and Rockwell Automation. He will have a new co-driver on board, English teenager Sophie-Louise Buckland, who made her Barbados debut last year. Buckland will miss out on the first two runs of King Of The Hill, however, as Worswick was among the regular overseas competitors to participate in a fundraiser organised last August in support of Barbadians Daryl Clarke and Russell Brancker, who were both hospitalised after an accident in last year’s Rally Barbados.
Maximising the funds raised
When Worswick auctioned a King Of The Hill passenger ride online, two identical bids were received – one from Melissa Costin-Hurley, the other from Carron Burley, the partner of Escort MkI driver Ray Clough, who had been the prime mover behind the UK fundraising efforts.
Worswick takes up the story: “I contacted the Rally Club to see if I could use my first two runs to take different passengers, thereby maximising the funds raised, before my actual co-driver would step in; as always, they were more than helpful. Looks like the service area will be busy, with three different co-drivers in the first three runs!”
From Costin-Hurley’s viewpoint, Worswick may well have taken on something of a challenge, as he describes Melissa as “no mean driver herself, which in her job as a community midwife is a more useful skill than might be imagined.”
Rally Barbados 2019 will run from May 31 to Sunday, June 2, with the Rally Show on the previous Saturday (May 25) followed by King Of The Hill at its new location of Stewarts Hill on Sunday, May 26.
(PR/EZS)
BRITAIN’S NIGEL WORSWICK will be making his ninth appearance in Sol Rally Barbados in a Ford Escort WRC.
(FP)
