Over 1,000 days (1,007 to be precise) is a rather long time to wait, just to lose out by 0.4 seconds.
But on his first American Rally Association National Championship start since Southern Ohio 2023, that’s the fate that befell Tom Williams at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood.
Driving Standard Motorsports’ Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, the Briton won the opening stage and led the rally outright on Saturday morning, but lost the RC2 win, and second overall (to Patrick Gruszka), on the final stage by just four tenths.
That’s galling for any competitor, but 2022 RC2 champion Williams was delayed by a puncture on SS11 of 13 which really did the damage (costing over 20 seconds), and was then magnanimous in defeat to his rival on the night-time powerstage.
“Pat pulled it out the bag, I’ll give it to him,” Williams told DirtFish. “I was just being cautious and lost a bit of time in that.”
Williams eventually missed victory by 21.6 seconds to Subaru’s Travis Pastrana. But despite the obvious case of what might have been, the 27-year-old’s overall tone remained positive, considering he hasn’t attempted a proper championship challenge in the past three years.
“For sure there was a bit of pressure,” he admitted. “I work full-time and I’m behind a desk half the time as a designer, so going from a desk to driving 120mph through Missouri, going over crests and jumps in the middle of the night, is quite tough.
“Adjusting between the two has been interesting but we were fully committed, we were confident. We were just trying to drive our own race. It was my first time being first on the road – when I was competing with Brandon [Semenuk] he was always first on the road, now I understand his situation a lot more.
“It has its benefits because you have a blank canvas,” Williams elaborated, “you don’t have to follow anyone. You go there and carve your own line out, and if you’re fully committed in your notes and how you want to go, it’s fine.
“But then on the second pass of course you’ve already made that line and everyone else has made their own line, so you try and recreate that and there’s lines all over the place, so that I found quite difficult. But I really enjoyed it actually.”
Williams also enjoyed working with Standard Motorsports for the first time, as team-mate to DirtFish Women in Motorsport Driver Aoife Raftery.
“I’ve known Ryan Booth for a lot of years,” Williams smiled, “I used to compete with him when he came to do JWRC and we were just chatting, and he asked if I wanted to come and do some events in the Škoda. It all worked out quite nicely.
“Now we’re here and the team did a fantastic job. Engineers, mechanics, Ryan, Keaton Williams as our coordinator, it was a hell of a team. It felt very easy, I just need to do my job better!”
The plan is for Williams to see out the season, which he is working to achieve.
“I’m really pleased that we made loads of progress – first time with the team, first time with Ross [Whittock, co-driver] for a couple of years, this is my third event in this car so we’re really happy with the progress,” he concluded, “but of course wanted to win the event.
“We’ll be back.”
