IOAN Lloyd and Sion Williams battled to a second placed finish and scored vital championship points in round six of the ADAC Opel Electric Rally Cup, the ADAC Saarland-Pfalz Rally over the weekend of 30-31 October.

Lloyd, 24-years old, from Llandysul and his co-driver Williams from Blaenau Ffestiniog are competing in the all-electric seven-round rally championship in their Vauxhall UK Mokka GSE Rally car.

The Saarland Rally had been re-scheduled from August after being postponed due to the risk of wildfires and ran from a base in the town of Illingen in the south-west of Germany, not far from the French border.

After a shakedown on Thursday, the action ran on Friday afternoon and evening and throughout Saturday.

Lloyd and Williams overcame a series of dramas and just managed to get to the finish to score vital championship points and set up a final round showdown against their main rival Tom Dufour.

Lloyd said: “With everything that was thrown at us over the weekend we can be pretty satisfied that we managed to fight through to get some decent points.

“It was a very good rally run over really enjoyable roads and some classic WRC Deutschland stages. It certainly lived up to expectations.

“We started well in the opening stage to be fastest registered championship contenders.

“But then we overshot a junction that evening on the third stage. I locked up in a downhill braking area and had to go down the escape road and spin it round. So we dropped 20 seconds on that stage.”

The challenges continued on Saturday morning with another overshoot and then a puncture after they clipped a kerb. They had to stop and change the wheel mid-stage as they still had around seven miles to go. Impressively, they only lost two minutes changing the wheel.

Lloyd continues the story: “A lot of people had issues, so we were still in a decent position in the points. We knew it was important to try and fight through as much as we could.

“On the penultimate stage we had fastest time in the dark, which set us up for an attack on the power stage where bonus points were on offer.”

However, as they arrived at the re-group and re-charge before the power stage, Ioan heard an ominous noise in the diff.

“I knew it wasn't going to last very long and there was nothing much we could do at that time. It was just a case of trying to be as gentle as we could. We did half the power stage without a problem and then the diff locked spun us round.

“But we got through and then we had a 20-mile road section to make it back to the rally finish and that turned out to be more difficult than actually doing the power stage.

“We struggled back to the finish with a bit of luck and determination. We just about had enough drive to get through the control and into parc ferme. It wouldn't have gone much further!”

Ioan Lloyd is proud to confirm his 2026 athlete sponsor list: Mark Jukes Containers, Huw Jeffreys and Sons Plumbing and Heating Engineers, Castell Howell Foods, David Byrne Auto Repairs, West Wales Rally Spares and Vauxhall Motors.