Storming second place for Tom Cave in Portugal

Welsh rally driver Tom Cave opened his account in the 2014 Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy with a storming second place on the first of the five rounds, the Vodafone Rally de Portugal. The 22 year-old, partnered by Craig Parry, adopted a measured and mature pace and despite a light roll on the third day, brought his Ford Fiesta R2 to the finish of the event at the Algarve Stadium in second place, just 20.8 seconds adrift of the winner after four days of competition.

Even though Tom had contested the event before, little prepared him or the rest of the field for the 90mm of rain that descended on the first day of the pre-event recce. Streams became rivers as roads were flooded and the organisers quickly rescheduled several stage recces to allow the crews to safely carry make their pace notes.

By the time the event started, the rain had disappeared but the ground was still very wet and muddy in places and following the now-traditional superspecial stage in Lisbon, the crews approached the second day and its six gravel stages.

Tom chose a conservative pace, knowing that to push too hard would cause problems. His philosophy was soon proven, with other DDFT competitors suffering problems, including broken suspension and going off the road.

By the time he arrived at the end of the first day, he was fifth in the DDFT standings but most importantly, his car was unscathed.

The second day saw conditions better but with the longest stage of the event, the 32Km Santana da Serra test, showing wet and dry sections. However, he and Craig again maintained their concentrations, driving around what were by now, extremely rough and rutted roads.

He put in a push on the last stage of the day, the driest and smoothest and by the mid-point of the test, was the fastest driver in the category, more than 15 seconds faster than a chasing Sander Parn. However, as he turned into a left hand bend, the car clipped a tree root and was tipped into a slow, light roll. Luckily, a crowd of Portuguese spectators were able to get the car back on its wheels but the time loss, of around 50 seconds with the car on its side, meant that Parn passed him, to take second place.

Both Parn and Tom were elevated one position on the final morning, when leader Quentin Gilbert was involved in a road traffic accident ton the way to the first stage and on the first of the day's three stages, Tom went through 23 seconds faster than Parn, to take the lead. Parn responded on the following stage, reclaiming the top spot with a time 10s faster than Tom.

With a single 13Km stage between him and the finish and third place a distant 3 minutes 10seconds behind, Tom decided not to push for the win and risk a non-finish but rather, accept the second place on the first round of the season.

Commenting at the finish, Tom said; "This has been an incredible week and an incredible rally. It has definitely been the hardest rally of my career. The conditions have been very tough, from the recce through to the actual stages. By the time we got to them, they were generally very rough, muddy and rutted and we had to be very careful to begin with not to damage the car. We saw how easy it was to pick up problems in those conditions and I wanted to start the season with a solid points score to get us going.

"Having said that, it was really nice to have a bit of a push late on Saturday and Sunday and have a bit of a battle, when the conditions were better and not so rough. But as we got to the last stage, I decided that the points for second were much more important than risking a finish, so we backed right off to make sure that we got through to the end.

"It was a bit annoying to have the roll on Saturday, because without the time lost there, we would have been much further ahead on Sunday and it might have been Sander backing off to take a safe second instead of us. But these things happen - the M-Sport boys did an amazing job to get the car fixed up ready for the final day. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to know it had been over unless you saw the video on YouTube.

"The DMACK tyres held up really well to the conditions all weekend - we could really lean on them and they were consistent and took all the punishment the stages had. And I was really good to know that our partner Morris Lubricants wasn't just supporting us but the whole field, as all the cars were running Morris oils and brake fluids on this event and for the rest of the season.

"Finally, I have to say a massive thank you to the Portuguese fans, who got us back on our wheels again. If it hadn't been for them, then things might have been very different.

"It has been a very tough start to the season but I am delighted to take second here and be in second place overall as we now start to think about the next round."

The second of the five rounds takes the crews to Poland for another gravel event, over the weekend of 26-29 June.