By Paul Evans
Meirion Evans got his Peugeot 208 Rally Cup campaign off to a good start when he finished 11th on the opening round of the series, the Rallye Terre des Causses, in southwest France.
After two years competing in the British Junior Rally Championship, the 22-year old Carmarthen driver is keen to gain more international experience and has thrown himself into the ultra competitive single-make French series this year, where everyone competes in identical front-wheel drive Peugeot 208 R2 machines. The seven round 208 Cup has one of the biggest prizes in European rallying, with a cash prize fund of nearly €20,000 per event and the 2018 champion receiving a factory drive in the 2019 French Rally Championship in the PSA Group’s newest rally car, a Citroën C3R5.
Co-driven by Jonathan Jackson from St Asaph, Evans had to battle for all of day one with bent steering – fighting his Chazel Technologie Course team prepared 208 R2 that wanted to pull to the right all of the time. Against drivers from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, Evans fought back on day two to post some very respectable stage times and just miss out of a top 10 finish.
The next round of the 208 Cup is Rallye d’Antibes (May 18-20), but before that Evans will contest England’s first closed-road event, the Corbeau seats Stages in Clacton-on-Sea, in a Ford Fiesta R5 – run by the family’s Melvyn Evans Motorsport operation.
“Finishing eleventh overall on my first Peugeot 208 Cup round out of eighteen starters is quite pleasing, all things considered,” said Evans. “People have always told me how crazy the pace in this championship is, and you simply don’t appreciate it until you do it. Competing against these guys will only make me faster as I gain more experience of these rallies; events that some of the drivers have done numerous times. Day one wasn’t easy with our various issues which could have cost us a top ten in the end, but day two was better with times in and around the top ten all day, despite a stall and an overshoot. Next up in France is Antibes, which uses legendary stages such as the Col de Turini. It will be another tough challenge but it’s something that I am looking forward to.
“Before then we’re going to contest England’s first closed-road event and it’s a great opportunity to be able to drive the Fiesta R5 on what will be a special event for British rallying. It fits in to our schedule within the 208 Cup well and every mile will be important to us as we’d like to move into the R5 class on a more permanent basis in the future. For now, it’s a one off but we have some potentially interesting things happening that with some luck might open some doors for more events as the year progresses. But our primary focus for now remains on the Peugeot 208 Cup.”