“It was great to finish, huge crowds
in Mullaghmore. It was the toughest
rally of my life but fantastic.
Tremendous rally. There was a lot of
damage and we were very pleased to
get through.” That was the reaction
from Andrew Mullen when he finished
Rally Ireland, co-driven by his wife
Elaine in their Sligo Pallets Saxo.
They finished 2nd in class, and
completed the course. Under Super
Rally rules it wasn’t easy to figure
out quite who was in and who was
out, but Andrew and Elaine
definitely completed the course.
Just one example of being ‘out’ was
Owen Murphy sliding his Fiesta wide
on an early final day stage and
breaking a stub axle. The Billy
Coleman Award winner was out of the
rally. But he wasn’t. Owen had been
having a great run in his Fiesta,
and was up to 34th overall and
leading his class by a country mile.
Although his Fiesta was going no
further, Owen was still classified,
was 51st and 2nd in class! It is
just old-fashioned people like me
who think along the lines of being
in or out.
There was great feeling of
camaraderie on the rally, and just
two of the people Owen was thanking
at the finish were Toni Kelly for
the help of her service crew, and
Alastair Fisher for lending him a
Fiesta door!
Overall Rally Ireland was a huge
event, very successful, thanks to a
great deal of work and fantastic
co-operation as well from the Gardai
and the PSNI. Of course there were
snags, always will be on an event of
that size, but overall it was great.
Just one aspect of the event was the
way all the controls were set up and
operated. It was once again very
evident that it is just as easy to
operate controls correctly, where
the crews clock in at their
scheduled time, instead of getting
waved in early and being encouraged
to speed on road sections. A
complete anathema to the principles
of target timing where there is no
need or encouragement to speed. It
was interesting as well that ‘early
arrival’ boards were 25 metres from
the control, not 80 or 90 or 100
plus metres away! The competitors
thought the organisation was
fantastic, and a big part of that
was knowing exactly where they stood
as regards the timing of controls.
There were no grey areas.
It was a great pity that Marcus
Gronholm retired so early, although
thankfully there were no injuries.
However it certainly deprived the
rally of a lot of its zing. Very few
of the drivers, the best in the
world, weren’t in the scenery at
least once. Some got away with it,
some didn’t. The damp conditions and
the nature of the roads meant that
after the passage of only a few
cars, there was a lot of mud pulled
out, making the grip level very
unpredictable. “We were on a knife
edge most of the time” was a comment
heard from the top drivers
continually throughout the weekend.
One of the worst affected by the
difficult conditions was Kris Meeke.
He was 3rd overall after the opening
stage, where he faced the same
conditions as the top drivers. But
once on to the Friday stages he was
running further back and having to
battle against ever muddy
conditions. The WRC drivers, allowed
mousse in their tyres, just drive
over everything of course, which
creates even more mud on the road.
Interestingly, the mousse inserts
are going to be banned from January,
when Pirelli will supply control
tyres. This surely will curtail the
top drivers just driving over the
top of everything, and using the
roads, or the forest tracks, purely
as a guideline!
Eventually Kris, having already lost
time when a turbo pipe came loose,
slid his Subaru off the road at slow
speed, caught a tree on the way down
a 15 foot bank into a field, and
suffered a fair amount of damage. He
got going eventually, but it was too
little too late. He was completely
despondent afterwards, and
commented, “We worked so hard to get
the best package and the best set-up
we could. But conditions were so
against us. It was like letting
Tiger Woods tee off, and then
sending a Massey Ferguson down the
fairway before you tee off. It was
so frustrating, and maybe Rally
Ireland wasn’t the event to try,
because if it was wet this was
always going to happen. Somewhere
like Germany would have given me a
better chance, but it was only in
Ireland that we could get the
support and the budget. If it had
been a 6th gear monumental accident,
but it was 20 mph, which winds me up
even more. It was a narrow section,
very muddy and slippy, a wheel
locked.”
Kris is now trying to pick himself
up, and is scheduled to test for
Prodrive later this week. But even
that is far from clear-cut, as
Markko Martin has also now also been
asked to test.
At least Kris can look forward to a
‘bit of fun’ on the 1st/2nd December
when he has been invited to drive
Conor Curley’s Barry Den Motor Sport
prepared Mk2 Escort on the Killarney
Historic Rally. Kris, who will
probably be co-driven by Paul Nagle,
will run in the modified section,
where he will be up against such
drivers as Phil Collins, Wesley
Patterson and Kevin O’Donoghue, all
in Escorts. Ray Cunningham heads the
Historic section in his Mini Cooper,
with some of his opposition to
include Adrian Kermode and former
Historic Champion John Keatley in
their Porsche 911’s. The Classic
section is headed by Alan Ring in a
Mk1 Escort, from Ger McCarthy (TR7)
and Gareth Lloyd (Escort).
Sean Mullally, whose RT
Communications company supplied 900
radios to organisers and competitors
on Rally Ireland, is to co-drive on
the Killarney Historic for Russell
Brookes in Russell’s original Lotus
Sunbeam. The stages for the
Killarney Historic may be classic,
but they are also very tough, and it
is going to be another long rally of
attrition.
One battle that was truly memorable
on Rally Ireland was for the
Production category. One couldn’t
help but feel sorry for Mark
Higgins, who saw the chance of a
World Title slip away as his Impreza
slithered off the road as he tried
to finish the final Saturday stage
with a front wheel puncture. Mark
was in with a big chance this season
of clinching the Tarmac
Championship, the Production World
Championship, and retaining his
British Rally Title.
Well, the Tarmac is gone, the World
Production evaporated with that
puncture, and he is going to be
really up against it on Wales Rally
GB, as he has to switch to an older
model GpN Impreza. However, on Rally
Ireland the door opened for Niall
McShea, and he drove out of his skin
on the Sunday morning to take the
honours. Co-driven by Marshall
Clarke, Niall survived a bent wheel
or suspension on his Impreza to pile
the pressure on the four times
Portuguese Rally Champion Armindo
Araujo who promptly crashed on the
penultimate stage, Donegal Bay. He
crashed when just 5km from the
finish and leading in Portugal this
year, so Araujo, a real nice guy,
must be pretty sick.
Another Fermanagh man, Richard
Cathcart also put up a brilliant
driving display to come 13th overall
and 3rd GpN. If only he hadn’t lost
time through road penalties leaving
service when his Impreza’s gear
change need fixed, and if only he
didn’t have to run so far back,
facing dreadful conditions. But then
it was a rally full of ‘if onlys!”
Richard could have captured a dream
result. Still, he is clearly a very
fine driver.
Top placed British driver was Guy
Wilks and he also had a dream run.
He was in Derek McGarrity’s S11, the
yellow ex Pirelli car, and it went
like a clockwork right through the
rally, with hardly a spanner put on
it. Guy was unable to do any
pre-event testing, and he didn’t
even fit in to the seat very well.
Highest placed Irish driver was
Gareth MacHale. Gareth made a
cautious start to the rally, and
then had a go at catching Matthew
Wilson, but that Sunday morning wake
up call prompted him to just go for
a finish, so fine was the dividing
line between success and disaster in
the slippy conditions on this rally.
There were some chuckles during the
rally when a commentator kept
calling Austin MacHale, Father
Austin and Gareth and Aaron, Brother
Gareth and Brother Aaron. There we
go then! Tim McNulty was the top
Irish driver through the first day,
and was looking very solid in the
top ten until his Pierse backed
Subaru engine gave up on the
Saturday morning. Tim was
symptomatic in a way of the great
Irish rallying culture, with more
WRC cars per head of population than
anywhere else in the world, and
could mix it with the best in the
world.
Roy White debuted the new MG S2000
on the rally, and Roy was delighted
with the new car, calling it a real
rally car, much more enjoyable than
his GpN machine. Roy did manage to
break the unbreakable gearbox, but
it transpired that a secondary
bearing on the step off gear shaft
was wrongly fitted. The box had done
1700km of testing and then had to
let go on Rally Ireland! Still, Roy
finished the course under Super
Rally Rules, and set some decent
times. Gwyndaf Evans has been
testing a second car and he is so
impressed with it he is trying to
get a deal to run it on the British
Championship next year. Stuart Jones
is going to drive it on Wales Rally
GB. Roy White plans to run his under
the FESP banner next season, and
have a go at the Tarmac
Championship, and hopes as well to
have a run on something like the
Limerick Mini Stages at the end of
January for some further match
practice.
There were as usual a lot of stories
after the rally, not counting the
parties on Sunday night in Sligo.
Just one of those stories concerned
Manfred Stohl, who came into
Northern Ireland a day early, so
that he could go to Belfast Shipyard
at Queens Island to see where the
Titanic was built. He also went to
the Folk and Transport Museum at
Cultra to see the Titanic
exhibition. He was disappointed that
the SS Nomadic, the Titanic supply
ship that had been moored at the
Belfast Odyssey quayside for some
time, had been towed away for a
refit the previous weekend. Also
when Manfred was driving around the
route, and saw all the fabulous new
houses that have been built all over
the place, he wanted to know what
industries we have, to pay for all
this!
You can’t please everybody all of
the time, and one reporter, who
comments on sports television
coverage wrote about the Eurosport
coverage (The RTE coverage seemed to
be blocked in the North) – “Before
Rally Ireland took to the dung
spattered roads around the Border,
there was a bit of a stinker for
Eurosport in Belfast. The poor, very
poor, commentator told us the super
special smashing marvellous stage at
Stormont Buildings was about to be
beamed to 800 million people. Or
not, as the case was, as we got one
race and that was it, because there
was a problem with the ‘microwave
relay’. I’m not completely sure what
this is but if its up for the
Olympics in 2012 then I’m already in
training. Rustlers burgers in just
over a minute. Pictures returned,
but with no sound, although when we
were told that Matthew Wilson
‘certainly knows how to drive’, I
hoped they would go again’
Well, that reporter didn’t seem too
impressed. But surely he was being
unfair. It was a huge occasion, as
was the whole rally. Certainly it
was a downer for the fans when
Gronholm went out and handed Loeb a
six point advantage going into Wales
Rally GB and makes him an odds on
certainty for his fourth World
Title. It was disappointing that
Meeke, as well as Eugene Donnelly
went out so early. Maybe the crowds
were down and thinner than
anticipated because of this and the
awful weather at times. But Noel
Clarke and his team did a fantastic
job of traffic management; there
were no big jams or problems. How do
you judge success in something like
this anyway? The rally was expected
to bring about 30 million euros in
revenue, between tourism and
everything else. But if truth were
told, it probably cost about the
same amount to stage when everything
is taken into account. So how do you
judge? Who cares, roll on the next
time!
Regards, Brian Patterson.
