Irish
Notes 16th January 2006.
Despite
reports of a planned sabbatical, current Northern
Ireland Rally Champion Kevin Lynch is listed as
No1 seed in his Subaru Impreza WRC for this
Saturday’s Kirkistown Winter Stages. The event,
organised by the 500 MRC and the Ulster Automobile
Club is a traditional ‘pre-season shakedown’
for the Championship, and has again attracted a
strong entry for the 6 special stages. Denis
Biggerstaff (Impreza WRC), George Robinson (Escort
WRC) and Brendan O’Hagan (Focus WRC), are just
some of the other top entries. Just because Lynch
has entered the event, that does not necessarily
mean that he will be there, as he still maintains
that pressure of work is leaving him no time to
spare.
Complementing
last week’s story that Donegal Oil will be
running a Shell Racing refuelling rig on the
forthcoming First Choice Flooring Galway
International, well known former competitor Jim
Crozier of Irish Racing Fuels will also have a rig
in operation, to dispense his ‘Sunoco’ Race
Fuels. This will also serve the Mk2
Escort/modified competitors as well as the WRC
machinery. There could have been a logistical
nightmare in Galway, with 150 cars running at 30
second intervals all needing fuel at the special
areas which Clerk of the Course John O’Connell
has provided.
Further
top GpN entries for the Galway International,
opening counter in the Pirelli Tarmac series,
include Cookstown man John McGlaughlin in his
Lancer, and two times Donegal International winner
James Cullen, also in a Mitsubishi. McGlaughlin, a
GpN winner on the Cork forestry in ‘05, also
showed real pace on Rally Ireland with some
fastest times through the forests. If the
conditions are as slippy as usual in Galway, he
could be one to watch. Cullen, who will have Reba
Graham co-driving again, really switched on to GpN
on last autumn’s Donegal Harvest event where he
led initially, and eventually had to give best to
Eugene Donnelly in his Corolla WRC.
At
a seminar last Sunday in Cashel, many of the top
competitors in the McCauley Trailers Forestry
Championsip got together to look at ways of
advancing the series for this year. One of the
main proposals was to introduce a full 2 wheel
drive category, with its own points system, to run
in parrallel with the 4wd brigade.
The
NI Rally Championship is also placing more
emphasis on the 2 wd competitors this season, and
‘the Patrick Haughey Partnership Architects’
part of the series is aimed solely for 2WD
‘Clubmen’, and there will 7 all asphalt,
sealed surface events to make up a ‘sister’
series.
This
Sunday (22nd Jan) there will be a
Motorsport Open day at Superdrive Motorsport
Centre in Portadown where marshals and prospective
marshals will be able to not only find out more
about rallying, but also avail of rides in rally
cars to see what the action is like from that side
of the
screen. One of the main men behind the open day,
which is run in conjunction with
‘2&4Wheels’, is Plunkett Boyle. Fittingly,
Plunkett has just become the first person from
Northern Ireland to win the UK Marshal of the Year
award, awarded by the MSA.
Brian
Patterson.
