Gregg laments tough Rally Barbados after seventh-place finish

Jamaica’s Kyle Gregg and his co-driver Orry Hunte had to settle for a seventh-place finish following a closely contested Sol Rally Barbados 2023.

Compatriot Jeffrey Panton and co-driver Michael Fennell fared a little better after ending the rally in fourth place overall, with New Zealander Haddon Paddon and co-driver John Kennard narrowly beating out Barbadian Dane Skeete to the title in just 0.88 of a second, the smallest winning margin for more than 20 years.

Paddon took the recent three-day event in one hour, 28 minutes and 41 seconds driving in his Hyundai i20 R5, while Skeete, who was agonisingly close to sealing the title, drove his Subaru Impreza WRC.

For Gregg, who had a first real run out in his Rally 2 Ford Fiesta, the event had its ups and downs which posed different challenges over the rally weekend.

“After finishing third in my class and fourth overall at the King of the Hill event, and then fifth in class and seventh overall in Rally Barbados, I felt good. It was the first time rallying the car at pace against tough opposition and we were in the top five on most of the stages, so the progress was there, I just needed a few changes.

After starting off the rally with a boost leak which affected the car’s power and timing, Gregg dropped to 14th position before climbing his way up to fifth place on day two.

All that hard work would then be undone on the final day, when Gregg had a spin which stalled the car and cost the Jamaican team a lot of time.

That incident saw Gregg drop to seventh overall and fifth in the R5 class. In the end, Gregg finished close to two minutes off the lead. Of the 82 cars that started the rally, only 40 finished the three-day event.

“The pace at the rally was crazy, if you win a stage you win by eight-tenths or five-tenths of a second. Haddon Paddon was phenomenal, you can tell that he does it for a living because he can see the true pace as he was flogging all of us,” added Gregg.

In the meantime, Rally Barbados first-timers, Jamaican Horatio Brown and Barbadian co-driver Leslie Everson, finished an impressive 19th overall in their Citroen C2R2.

Brown’s effort secured him the M1 class, dethroning 11-time class champion Edward Corbin.