​Perez take class win in Trackrod Rally Yorkshire

​The 23-year-old Perez swapped his race gloves for rally boots with regular co-driver Gary McElhanney by his side to take fifth spot overall as well as the outstanding Category 2 win, as despite encountering engine problems near the end, they were in a battle for the lead for most of the event.

Perez and McElhanney were in the Amigos-sponsored and Chesterfield-prepared Dansport historic 1970 Porsche 911RS rally car, and blasted through the six stages in the 53-year-old classic that included a stage in darkness on the Friday night.

The internationally renowned rally saw the start and finish at Filey Seafront, North Yorkshire and was part of the British Rally Championship, while the Trackrod Historic Cup set the scene for the Fuchs British Historic Rally Championship that Perez and McElhanney were in.

The historic section of the event was run over around 45 stage miles of epic RAC Rally stages with 76 historic rally car contenders taking part, two-wheel drive crews ran the stages first in reverse seeded order before the heavy-hitting four-wheel drive machinery and that’s where the battle for the British Historic Rally Championship began.

Special stage one Dalby 1 saw the pair were fastest on stage with a time of 13:51.4s. Perez was second overall with Nottinghamshire driver George Lepley in front by five seconds.

The move to Gale Rigg for SS2 saw Perez tackle the 6.11-mile stage with precision to still lead class C2 but go down the leaderboard into eighth place.

The move into Ryedale saw SS3 Cropton, a tight and twisty forestry stage of 7.94 mile long and again Perez was fastest overall, back into second in command on the rally and still leading his class.

SS4 Staindale was another fast forest stage lined with spectators. It was the shortest stage of 5.73 mile long and Perez extended his lead in class and was still second in the event overall.

The fifth stage of Saturday was SS5 Dalby 2 and Perez dropped to third overall and had to nurse a sick engine that just needed to keep going until the end.

The last stage of the rally was Langdale, another well-known RAC Rally stage that had caught many a World Rally driver out in its time. It was the longest stage on the event of 13.24 miles and engine problems persisted for the pair, seeing them drop to tenth spot coming out of the stage and two places in the overall rally to finish in fifth place in a time of 13:33.2s.

At the ceremonial finish at Filey beach, they crossed the ramp to take an impressive first place in class, leading the event from start to finish, and fifth in the Fuchs British Historic Rally, only 57.2 seconds off the number one slot taken by Jason Pritchard/Phil Clarke in a Ford Escort RS1800

Afterwards Seb said: “It was such a shame that we had some engine issues in the later part of the event that slowed us down but didn’t stop us taking a first place in Class win. We were in a battle for the lead for most of the rally unfortunately the problems let us down. We will be back.”

“A big thanks to Dansport for their usual first-class support and keeping us on the road.”