MacCrone’s Escort wins Mull, the first two-wheel-drive win since 2014
John MacCrone and Kirsty Riddick won the Mull Rally on 9 to 11 October 2026 in a Ford Escort Mk2, 39.0 seconds ahead of Hugh Hunter’s Ford Fiesta Rally2.
John MacCrone and Kirsty Riddick won the Mull Rally on 9 to 11 October 2026 in a Ford Escort Mk2, 39.0 seconds ahead of Hugh Hunter and Andy Marchbank’s Ford Fiesta Rally2. It is the first win in the Mull Rally for a car without four-wheel drive since 2014, and it ends a run of eight editions, from 2015 to 2025, that went to four-wheel-drive cars. The Escort won without the most stage wins: Scott MacBeth’s Volkswagen Polo R5 took nine of the 15.
Fifth on stage one, in front by stage five
The rally was a round of the Scottish Tarmack Rally Championship, run over 15 asphalt stages in the traditional three-leg format. The 2026 supplementary regulations describe “the majority of the event run in darkness”.
MacCrone and Riddick did not start fast. Hunter was quickest on SS1 and MacCrone was fifth, 8.4s behind. Scott MacBeth/Andrew Falconer then led after SS2, SS3 and SS4. MacCrone won SS3 and was second after SS4, 21.0s behind MacBeth.
SS5, Hill Road/Glen Aros, changed that. MacCrone was fastest in 11m02.1s and took the lead. MacBeth took 15m37.6s, was 85th on the stage and dropped to 16th overall.
Leg 1 ended with MacCrone on 41m30.8s. Colin O’Donoghue/Evan MacBride, in a second Escort Mk2, were second on 42m32.2s and Hunter third on 42m40.1s.
To call conditions treacherous is an understatement.Mull Rally observer John Fife, after the first leg
He described water lying in hollows and verges and running across the road, often in braking zones.
The lead of 51.8s was cut to 2.9s in one stage, then rebuilt to 39.0s at the finish.
MacCrone led after every stage from SS5 to the finish, eleven in a row. Hunter was second from SS7, and the gap stood at 32.7s at the end of Leg 2. On SS12, The Long One, which the regulations set as the opening stage of Saturday night, MacCrone gained 19.1s on him and led by 51.8s.
With three stages left came SS13, the fourth run through Mishnish Lochs. MacCrone took 7m55.2s, 20th fastest on the stage, against Hunter’s 7m06.3s. That was 48.9s gone, and the lead was 2.9s with two stages left.
He won SS14 by half a second and SS15 by two-tenths, both times from MacBeth. The lead went to 12.6s after SS14 and 39.0s at the finish.
Nine stage wins, third place
MacBeth was fastest on nine of the 15 stages, MacCrone on four and Hunter on two. MacBeth finished third, 1m37.2s behind the winner. His SS5 time alone was 4m35.5s slower than MacCrone’s, more than that whole deficit.
The Escort won on total time, and narrowly: 39.0s in 2h11m58.4s is 0.49% of the winner’s time, or about 2.6s a stage.
Stage Wins vs. Cumulative Victory
Total: 15 StagesHalf as many top-class cars as in 2025
Class 1, which takes Rally2 and R5 cars, S2000 cars and World Rally Cars, had six entries against twelve in 2025: three Rally2 cars and three R5s. The whole rally had 128 entries and 125 starters, against 130 and 124 in 2025, and 87 cars were classified.
Paul MacKinnon, the 2025 winner, and Neil Roskell, third in 2025, are not on the 2026 entry list. Fergus Barlow, the 2023 winner and 2025 runner-up, did not start with entry No 1. Fife wrote that at shakedown “a death rattle was heard from under the bonnet” and that an Escort Mk2 was sourced from Stirling as a replacement. Running as No 135, Barlow and Heather MacCrone were 12th after Leg 1 and retired with a mechanical problem after SS5.
Two class 1 cars went off the road. Jonathan Mounsey/Richard Wardle (Ford Fiesta R5) were third overall after SS11 and went out in Leg 3. John Stone/Charlotte McDowall (Volkswagen Polo R5) went out after one completed stage.
That left four class 1 finishers, all behind the Escort: Hunter second, MacBeth third, Hugh Brunton/Richard Crozier (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) eighth, 8m25.2s back, and John Morrison/Sinclair Young (Ford Fiesta Rally2) 13th.
Class 3 means two-wheel drive
The entry form defines class 3 as “2-wheel drive cars with normally aspirated engines over 2000cc, or forced induction engines over 1500cc”. MacCrone and Riddick entered class 3, so their car was two-wheel drive, and the entry list gives it as 2500cc. Rear-wheel drive comes with the Escort Mk2 itself. The 2025 regulations, which carried an Escort-specific award, refer to crews in “a RWD Mk1 or Mk2 Ford Escort”.
The Escort and the Rally2 cars share one overall classification but not a class. The regulations seed cars “in order of anticipated performance”, and MacCrone ran as car 3.
Two other Escort Mk2s finished in the top six, in different classes. Stephen Thompson/Larry Higton were fourth, in class 5 with a 2000cc engine. O’Donoghue/MacBride were sixth, in class 3 with 2500cc.
Hunter and MacBeth never stopped pushing: together they won eleven of the 15 stages.
Mull Rally 2026 · the chasing pack
The two-wheel-drive awards differ from the road order
The awards list names Thompson/Higton as “1st 2 Wheel Drive Car”, O’Donoghue/MacBride second and Luke Constantine/Ifan Devine (Opel Corsa Rally4) third. On the road, MacCrone was first, Thompson fourth, O’Donoghue sixth and Constantine seventh. MacCrone appears in the awards only as “1st Overall”, not among the two-wheel-drive or class awards. Under the 2026 regulations, “Overall award winners will not be eligible for Class awards”. The class 3 awards went to Billy Bird, Michael Harbour and Tim Baker, and neither MacCrone nor O’Donoghue appears among them.
Constantine and Devine had been third overall after SS4. Constantine said two punctures cost them: three minutes changing a wheel on SS9, then another puncture on SS11. They finished seventh overall and second in class.
The aim before we set out was to have a clean, risk-free run and we achieved that.Luke Constantine
Twelve years, eight editions
Only eight editions fell between the two Escort wins. All eight were four-wheel-drive cars. The closed-road rally did not run in 2017 and 2018, when the existing legislation raised “very significant insurance challenges”, and a substitute event, a Targa and Historic Road Rally with a gravel Rally Time Trial, was held on the island each year. The 2020 rally was cancelled because of uncertainty over the Covid-19 pandemic.
MacCrone’s own record
MacCrone’s two earlier wins do not move the date. In 2013 he won in a Ford Fiesta S2400 developed by M-Sport, which a preview of that rally described as four-wheel drive with a 2400cc naturally aspirated engine. In 2016 he won in a Fiesta R5, which the rally’s history calls “M-Sport four-wheel-drive machinery”.
He returned to two-wheel drive in 2019, as car 1 in an Escort Mk2. In 2022 he finished third overall in an Escort Mk2, with Peter MacCrone as co-driver.
More Escorts, higher up than in 2025
The best Escort in 2025 was Thompson/Higton in seventh, 9m10.2s behind the winner. In 2026 they were fourth, 3m56.5s behind. Three of the top six overall were Escort Mk2s, and class 3 alone had 20 entries, against 13 a year earlier.