OSIAN Pryce made a near-perfect start to this year’s Prestone British Rally Championship, by taking a podium finish at the Border Counties Rally in Scotland.

Pryce, winner of last year’s World Rally Championship feeder series Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy, is blending a world programme with an assault on this season’s BRC – a series that he has twice finished as the runner-up in.

This season he has stepped up to a Hills Ford/Alphera-backed Fiesta R5 in his pursuit of domestic glory.

The Machynlleth ace and co-driver Dale Furniss kicked off their first season in a four-wheel-drive car at last week’s Jedburgh Border Counties Rally.

The Welshmen overcame three punctures and a broken track-control arm to score a solid third place on their first ever visit to Scotland’s Tweed Valley stages.

Pryce arrived at the start of the event on the back of a successful pre-event test and admitted he was still feeling his way into the Spencer Sport-run Fiesta for the first half of the rally.

A step-by-step approach worked perfectly and resulted in him scoring fastest time on the event’s penultimate test, the second run through the Elibank stage.

“I’m very happy with this result,” commented Pryce.

“If you consider that, just a few weeks ago, we were sitting with our sponsors Hills Ford and Alphera working out the best way to go about this season – and in the intervening time we’ve sourced the car and a team and have scored a podium.

“That’s a pretty good result as far as I’m concerned.”

A puncture just a handful of corners into the second of two Friday night stages cost Pryce and Furniss dearly.

“We lost the left-front tyre after about 10 corners,” said Pryce. “There was a big cut in the sidewall, something had sliced it right open.

“That left us six miles or so to drive on a flat. We lost around 35 or 40 seconds. To be honest, that was where we lost the chunk of time.

“The other two punctures didn’t cost us much time.”

Despite a sixth-stage deflation, Pryce came out of the Yair stage grateful to still be in the rally. We hit the same rock as David Bogie, but it put him out of the event.

“It was a proper, football-sized boulder that was right on the line; going nowhere.

“There was a big bang when we hit it with the front-right. That did the tyre and the track-control arm, forcing us to do the last part with the wheel jammed back into the wheel arch.

“We’d also had an intercom problem in that loop – I couldn’t hear Dale all of the time, I was snatching the odd note here and there. I was shouting back to him that I couldn’t hear him, but he couldn’t hear me either.”

Spencer Sport fixed the car, and the intercom, at the ensuing Newtown St Boswells service, allowing Pryce to beat everybody in the last-but-one stage.

“We’d been building the pace through the rally,” said Pryce. “We had a really good pre-event test; we didn’t do a whole load of miles, but we made change after change to the set-up.

“When we got to the start, I couldn’t believe how good the car felt. To be honest, I didn’t really trust that it could be that good and offer that much stability and traction. I drove one of these cars on Rally GB, but it wasn’t anything like this.

“Much credit has to go to Spencer Sport for preparing a fantastic Fiesta for us.

“The priority for me on this rally was seat time. I made a deliberate decision not to go too hard too early.

“I don’t have anything like the experience of these cars that the other guys have around me and I needed to get to the finish to build my confidence in the car.

“I built the speed as the event progressed and that meant that we were able to go fastest in stage eight. I was happy with that.“There’s more to come from me and from the car. Honestly, we’re nowhere near where we can be with this thing which is why I’m really chuffed to be coming away from round one with good points on the board and a podium in the bag.”