Cave serves notice

French fancy: Sebastien Loeb overcame his problems with ice on Friday to claim victory in the Rally of Wales
David Smith13 April 2012

Sebastien Loeb, the last-minute winner of a dramatic Wales GB Rally, may rule his sport for now but a new British teenage talent showed his potential to one day challenge the five-time world champion.

Tom Cave turned 17 just 18 days before the final round of the World Rally Championship began on Friday, yet the Welsh lad returned a performance of immense maturity to finish 30th overall and winner of his production car class at yesterday's finish in Cardiff.

In a two-wheel-drive Ford Fiesta, Cave was never going to be in the same league as Loeb, who finally added victory in Britain's toughest motor sport event to his conquests in classic rallying in a far more powerful four-wheel-drive Citroen.

Loeb, who had fallen victim to ice when he overturned his car on a practice run, put that embarrassment behind him to claim his 11th victory from 15 starts this season.

But the Frenchman had to work for it, coming from two seconds down going into the 19th and final stage to beat the Ford of Finland's overnight leader Jari-Matti Latvala by 2.7 seconds. The brilliance of Loeb's drive through a stage near Port Talbot that embraced car-punishing potholes, plunging ice-covered bends and fast curves lined by stout trees, is what Cave must strive for.

He honed his skills in Latvia, where driving laws allowed him to compete on private tracks but not on stage-linking road sections where experienced co-driver Gemma Price took the wheel.

Cave, though, looks capable of raising the profile of British rallying in the way Lewis Hamilton has put Britain on pole position in Formula One. He said: "It has always been my dream to compete in Britain's round of the World Rally Championship. My earliest memories were of watching it with my dad.

"To have finished it at my first attempt, and so high up the order, is special. What happens now depends on what sponsorship we can raise.

"But I really want to rally at the top level."

Such was the quality of Cave's performance he finished nearly 14 minutes ahead of the second car in his class, the Castrol/Evening Standard Ford Fiesta crewed by Sky Sports presenter Tony Jardine and myself. For us, however, finishing 36th overall was beyond our wildest dreams.

It was only my fourth rally and together Tony and I boasted a combined age of 111, leading Jardine to say: "Given our seeding at the start of 87, and the quality of the entry, to finish so high really was incredible.

"We even beat the young Turkish driver Emre Yurdakul, who has won this year's international Ford Fiesta championship, and there is hardly a mark on our car despite the awful conditions we encountered."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in