Hills Ford Three Shires Stages

Report and Images by Ade Tandy

5^th September 2021

The Three Shires Stages is a closed road rally based at Malvern in Worcestershire, also visiting Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.

Following the ceremonial start in Ledbury Town Centre on Saturday evening it was down to business for the 150 cars taking part in 14 Stages in total across the three counties.

With the safety car through, it was then the turn of the competitors on the first stage of the day, SS1 MAR Motorsport Gospel Oak 1.

There was a great selection of cars taking part, from the stalwart of rallying the MKI Escort, the iconic Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi Evo and even the favourite of the Military and farmers, the Land Rover.

Viewing was limited to only 3 stages with designated official spectator areas and the cars coming through every 30 seconds. The cars would take on the stages a total of 3 times during the day.

It was quite obvious early in the meeting that the front runners were all competing in class F.

Class F is current and former World Rally cars with a sequential gearbox, plus current and former S2000, RRC and R5 cars and any derivatives (including non-homologated cars). A handful of the other classes managed to break into the top 15.

Craig Jones & Shaun Leyland in their Mitsubishi Evo 9 and Philip Hopkins and Aled Edwards Mitsubishi Evo 6 were the top two Class E runners (4 Wheel Drive Cars that do not qualify for Class F).

Philip Hopkins and co-driver Aled Edwards ended up in 8^th place overall with Craig Jones and co-driver Shaun Leyland in 10^th  Place, 1^st and 2^nd in their Class. 

The 3 fastest cars all came from Class F and from 3 different manufacturers, Skoda, VW and Proton.

The overall winner was the The Scan Station Melvyn Evans Motorsport Volkswagen Polo GTi R5 1600 driven by Welshman Meirion Evans and co-driver Jonathan Jackson in an overall time of 59:05:00.

In 2nd Place, and only 4 seconds behind, went to Ollie Mellors and Max Freeman in the new Thornbridge Brewery, Michelin Motorsport, RVL Logistics, Kielder WTProton Iriz R5 in a time of 59:09:00.

And with 3rd place going to Melvyn Evans and Mark Glennester in the Skoda Fabia R5 in a time of 01:00:40.0.

It was also great to see a variety of cars participating, my favourite being the MKII Escorts. This is the very first car I ever purchased with my own money, boy I wish I had kept it now!

Planning for next year’s event is underway. More information about the Cheltenham Motor Club can be found here. Three Shires Stages.