Skeete fights the clock to be ready for Sunday

Reigning Barbados Rally Club (BRC) champion Roger 'The Sheriff' Skeete is fighting time to be ready for the club's second event of the year, this Sunday's (April 7) double-header at Sailor Gully and Pickerings, a joint promotion with the Motoring Club of Barbados Inc.
Since journalists visited the McEnearneys workshop nearly three weeks ago, work has been going steadily. On Tuesday afternoon, Skeete said: "We worked all the holiday weekend and we'll keeping working right through this week.
"It's been long enough now. I will be trying my hardest, but I know it will be a bit rough. I haven't been out for some months, apart from driving Wayne King's Peugeot at Luke Hill, so I am a little rusty."
And the competition has changed since last year, too, with the arrival in Barbados of the Ford Escort WRC driven to victory in the first two speed events of the year by Roger Mayers. So far, Mayers has faced neither Skeete nor Trevor 'Electric Micey' Manning, so Sunday's confrontation will be one to please the knowledgeable Barbados fans.
Skeete's Texaco, Michelin and McEnearneys'-backed car remains in Escort Cosworth form. As Skeete explained: "The only parts of my car which are Escort WRC are the front bumper and the rear spoiler, but it will be a much better car than it was at the end of last year. It can only feel better."
In 2001, the car was damaged twice - the front at Lamberts and the rear during the Texaco Rally; for the rest of the year, the car was shorter on one side than the other, so could not perform to its full potential.
Sunday's event has attracted a strong entry, as the Barbados motor sport season gradually builds. Manning's car will return to the island shortly, raising the prospect of superb competition in the months to come.

For further information, contact Robin Bradford (treelogy@sunbeach.net or 422 1829)