Guy quickest at Hungary shakedown

GUY and Phil topped the timesheets at shakedown for the Mecsek Rally, the Hungarian round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.

The red, white and blue Peugeot UK 207 S2000 set a time of 2mins 9.3secs on the twisty 3.7km tarmac stage - identical to Belgian team-mate Thierry Neuville.

Norway's Andreas Mikkelsen was third quickest for Skoda UK (+0.6); with Jan Kopecky fourth (Skoda Motorsport, +0.8); Bruno Magalhães fifth (Peugeot Portugal, +1.0) and Bryan Bouffier sixth (Peugeot France, +1.1).

The rally gets under way tonight (Friday) with a 1.2km prologue stage in host city Pécs before the crews tackle eight high-speed stages on Saturday's opening leg totalling 144km.

The first stage goes live at 09:08hrs local time with the first car not due to tackle the day’s final stage until 20:39hrs.

Sunday’s final leg consists of six stages totalling 107km - using the same roads as on Saturday but run in the opposite direction.

Guy told guywilks.com: "We are feeling really confident. The clocks are reset to zero and Hungary is a new challenge for everyone. None of the IRC drivers have experience here so it is a level playing field.

"The stages are super fast. Some are like motorway-width in places and others in the forests are single road-width with varying grip.

"You need to be fully committed everywhere to get in front but you can't cut the corners because there's rocks and logs on the inside. We need to be absolutely inch perfect.

"We've proved we've got the pace to be right at the sharp end in the IRC. Things just haven't been going our way. But they will. It will turn around and we'll get Peugeot UK back on top."