The 2300 Club website for the Tunnock’s Tour of Mull had a great new feature in testing – an online real-time status checker for the stages of the event. Checking at 11.50pm last night we could see that Stage 4, Mishnish Lochs 1 – had started and was still in progress with no cars yet back, while Stages 5 and 6 – Calgary Bay 1 and Loch Tuath 1 respectively – had obviously not begun.

Top seed Neil MacKinnon was out in the first stage with an overheating Subaru. Then there were punctures galore, turbo pipes coming off (Tommi Graham) and plenty of mud that made jacking up for a wheel change a bit tricky. There were some thrills and spills from James MacGillivray – overshooting the big hairpin at Dervaig and then clipping a rock. He says he’ll be OK for today.

At the end of the six Friday stages – from a total of seventeen stages – the top ten performers were:

1 P MacKinnon/D Barritt (Subaru Impreza) 49m 48s
2 C Duffy/I Duffy (Ford Escort MkII) 50m 09s
3 D Harper/C Campbell (BMW MINI) 52m 36s
4 J MacGillivray/I Frazer (Ford Escort MkII) 52m 58s
5 J Cope/R Fagg (Subaru Impreza) 53m 04s
6 W Bonniwell/K Rae (Subaru Impreza) 53m 14s
7 T Pye/K Riddick (Subaru Impreza) 54m 00s
8 D Miller/A Bailey (Subaru Impreza) 54m 30s
9 P Kirtley/D jones (Subaru Impreza) 54m 32s
10 E O’Donnell/S Proud (Ford Escort MkII) 24m 44s

We’ll report on the final results tonight and – one for the diary now – next year’s event will take place on 9th October (2009).

We have a policy of flagging up good websites – and the 2300 Club site for the Tour of Mull is up there. It’s absolutely tuned into the nature of the event and it’s giving rally buffs what they need in live up to date information.