KRIS Meeke was scathing of the way Rallye Vidreiro Centro de Portugal organisers handled a mistake that almost scuppered his chance of winning the Portuguese Rally Championship.
Meeke and navigator Stuart Loudon completed the two-day event third overall, a huge push on the rally-ending Power Stage good enough to secure them the fastest time and help them leapfrog Pedro Almeida and Mario Castro’s Skoda Fabia Rally2.
Armindo Araujo (Skoda Fabia RS Rally2) led the main field home, the difference between him and the Citroen C3 Rally2 of Jose Pedro Fontes less than two seconds after nearly 70 competitive miles.
The podium result – and the points that came with it – was more than good enough to hand Meeke the national crown in what is his first, full campaign running under the Team Hyundai Portugal banner.
After Friday’s opening test, the 45-year-old was facing disqualification from the event before this was downgraded to a three-minute time penalty. His team lodged a successful appeal and included fresh information to have this further reduced to one minute and 15 seconds to keep him in the hunt.
A late change to the road book meant Meeke and Loudon failed to stop at the new tyre marking zone – an offence punishable by expulsion – but a series of facts ensured they remained in the competition.
Incensed by this, the Dungannon driver questioned if the level of professionalism required to hold a fixture at such a high-level was missing from those promoting and planning Rallye Vidreiro Centro de Portugal. Despite seeing red, he used his allocation of ten tyres to perfection as the changeable weather added to the challenge.
“Obviously, the objective this year for Team Hyundai Portugal was to win the Championship and to lift the title is nice, but we had some troubles in the middle two rallies of the year which set us back a bit, with Armindo always being second, the dropped score rule and the bulls**t decision from the stewards to think about,” he said.
“But anyway, I am really happy, especially for a company like Hyundai that invests a lot of money into a national championship like this, it is brilliant for the sport and I am really happy to bring them the title.
“It was a very difficult rally, given the conditions and the climate – I really had to concentrate to keep errors to a minimum over both days,” added Meeke, who took the drivers’ title by only two points after also surviving a coming together with a kerb on stage five that bent a rear toe link on his Hyundai i20 N Rally2.
Across the eight-round season, Meeke – with the help of two different co-drivers – scored a total of five victories, with four of these coming on the loose and the other one on Rali da Agua’s Tarmac roads.
Meanwhile, Josh Moffett and Keith Moriarty secured top honours in this season’s Irish National Rally Championship with a runner-up finish at Saturday’s Donegal Harvest Rally aboard their Hyundai i20 R5.
“We got off to a bad start in the morning and found ourselves back in sixth but we just kept plugging away and it worked out for us,” said Moffett. “It is great to get another title – we are over the moon.”
Winning the traditional October meeting for a fourth consecutive occasion was Callum Devine (Skoda Fabia RS Rally2), his advantage at the end of the nine closed road stages totalling 12.4 seconds.
