Maldon rising star rally driver Tejpar scores solid Rallye de Ferrol finish

24 Jul Maldon rising star rally driver Tejpar scores solid Rallye de Ferrol finish

Nabila Tejpar achieved her goal in Spain last weekend, by scoring a top ten finish at Rallye de Ferrol (21/22 July), round three of the Peugeot Rallye Cup Iberica.

Piloting her Peugeot 208 R2, Tejpar and co-driver Richard Bliss overcame a difficult opening leg of the rally to finish tenth overall in the single-make championship, securing more points to add to her tally in her debut season in the series.

Tejpar, from Maldon in Essex would head to Spain for the first time in her career. With the opening round of the series taking place in Portugal, she was forced to miss round two and headed to the north-west of Spain for the third.

Having bagged a useful 11th overall in Portugal, Tejpar was looking to improve her position in the Iberica Cup points tables, despite going up against some of the quickest young drivers in Europe. Whilst the pace out front would be outstanding, Tejpar would look to ensure she could gain experience of the stages and unique characteristics of mainland European events during each round of the series.

A successful pre-event test with her PT Racing team before the event settled Tejpar into the driver’s seat and 154km of difficult special stages lay ahead. Just four tests would open the event in Leg 1 but aside from the final super special of the day, each would be over 20km in length.

With long and tough stages ahead, it was being dubbed around the service park as one of the toughest on the calendar so far. Tejpar confessed to being “caught out” by the conditions she faced during the day and in a rare lapse of concentration, she beached the Peugeot on a hairpin losing almost a minute in the process.

Day two would offer the chance to make up any lost time and with 90km of action ahead, would be a tough one for the seventeen 208 R2 pilots. On stages which resembled a forest stage rather than closed road rallying thanks to the significant amount of gravel pulled onto the roads, Tejpar made sure she had a clean run throughout the second leg.

Banishing the memories of the previous day’s mishap, she picked her way through the five stages of the day to record her first top-ten finish in the series this season.