MARTIN Meadows has been rewarded for his impressive drive on the Scottish Rally with a seat in the factory Proton team.

Although the Clitheroe driver was forced to retire from the event with a broken wheel, his debut performance in British Rally Championship was enough to convince team bosses.

Meadows will replace York's Jenny Davies - who missed the Scottish event after a serious testing accident - on next month's Jim Clark Rally in Scotland.

"I've waited all my life for that phone call. Now I've got to justify their faith in me," he said.

"There are only 12 manufacturer-backed seats available in the British Championship, and I'm going to be sitting in one of them."

"I drove my own Proton Compact on the Scottish, but I will be using a full factory-specification car next month, which will give me added confidence.

"My job will be to back up team leader Mats Andersson, and make sure we win the Super 1600 category."

A series of stunning drives in this year's BTRDA Gold Star Championship had attracted the attention of the Proton's motorsport manager Kerrie Flaus. And following Davies' pre-event testing accident at Sweet Lamb, Meadows was drafted in to make his BRC debut - with only four days notice.

The opening Dalbeattie and Ae stages saw Meadows and co-driver Joanne Lockwood slightly off the pace of the team-mate Andersson and the other regular Super 1600 runners. Despite this, he was happy with his form until trouble struck on the Twiglees test, when he was forced to stop and change a puncture, dropping five minutes.

At the start of the day Meadows had hoped to be about three seconds per mile behind Andersson. By the end he was only two seconds down and looking to progress further.

But another puncture on the 19-mile Glentrool wrecked their chances of a good finish.

Although the tyre had been going down for some time, he pressed on until the final corner of stage, when the wheel exploded and wrecked the front suspension.

"I was hugely disappointed. Things had been going well and things were starting to click, " said Meadows.

"But it was an amazing experience, even if we didn't finish the rally."

Flaus was equally impressed with his performance, and said: "Martin has done a fantastic job for Proton. He had no experience at this level, but you'd never have noticed. He fitted perfectly into the team."

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