Stephen Finlay, who last saw rally action on the WRC, is building a BDA Escort Mk2 and hopes the car will be ready for the McRae Stages. Stephen only ever competed on one rally in a Mk2, the Magherafelt Lanes Stages Rally, which he won.

Derek McGarrity continues to lead the Pirelli Tarmac Championship following his 2^nd place on the Shell Donegal Rally and has 50 points, Austin McHale is 2^nd with 40 and Donegal winner Eugene Donnelly is 3^rd on 39.

Isle of Man based Martin Freestone won the ‘classic’ section of the Donegal Rally in his RS 1800, while Frank Cunningham won the Historics in his Mini Cooper S from Adrian Kermode in a Porsche 911. Mike Doody in his Mini Cooper won the Post Historics from Prodrive engineer Paul Howarth, who drove a Porsche 911. The Historic section of the rally only tackled 7 stages over 2 days, several stages being lost through ‘interruptions’

The Andrew Nesbitt stage 16 incident on the Donegal Rally, when both Eugene Donnelly and Derek McGarrity crashed into Nesbitt’s stricken Impreza WRC, has revived calls for the gap between the cars to be increased from 30 to 60 seconds. What started as a simple spin for Nesbitt developed into a major incident, which cost him the rally win. He did have the right of appeal, but in the interests of the sport chose not to and offered his full congratulations to winner Eugene Donnelly.

Lucy-Ford Whitford and her co-driver Vicky McCandless survived a first day accident in their Micra to be the only all ladies crew to finish the Donegal International.

Willie John Dolan had Channel 4 presenter John Desborough co-driving on the Donegal International. Their GpN Impreza was forced out on the first day when the clutch expired, but they did get doing the Sunday stages in a course car role. Desborough described the Donegal roads as ‘exciting’!

Regards, Brian Patterson.