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Irish Notes 9th
April 2008.
Cork’s Brian O’Mahony and his co-driver John Higgins were considering entering their Clio for this weekend’s Lismore based Moonraker Forestry rally. Brian sees the event as an opportunity to get some match practice in for the forthcoming Pirelli Rally through Kielder, the opener for this year’s British series. Brian is in fact going to “00” on the Moonraker as he has a French engineer coming to fine-tune a new damper and spring set up. The fact that he is 00ing will make it a lot easier for the engineer to meet the Clio at the end of every stage. Top seeds on the Moonraker will be the top two combatants in the Hankook Irish forestry Championship, Ray Breen in his Focus WRC and Andrew Purcell in his Subaru. Breen has a new co-driver this time, Martin Brady, and Purcell is involved in a race against time to get his Subaru engine re-built. Just some further top entries include Colin Britton, who has been right on the pace this season, and James Murphy in his Escort WRC, as well as Denis Cronin in his Impreza WRC. Patsy Keenan is again flying over from the USA for the rally, Emma McKinstry is making the trip from Banbridge to compete in her Impreza WRC, Sean Heaney has entered and Sean Devine is a ‘possible’. Kris Meeke has been asked to drive a Corolla WRC on the forthcoming Barbados Rally, but as the day’s tick by Kris’ efforts to put together a drive on the Killarney Lakes seem more and more in vain. There was a suggestion that he might drive Kevin Barrett’s Subaru WRC, but it takes a lot of backing to make that sort of deal happen, and it looks like it is not going to happen. Pity, because the Killarney Lakes, again based in the Gleneagle Hotel, would appear to have an all time classic route this year, with stages such as Tim Healy, Cods Head, Ardgroom, Ballaghashean and Caragh Lake on the agenda. Kris Meeke is also competing in a Red Bull backed ‘Drifter’ event, which is sure to raise a few eyebrows. He is also assisting a few people with pre-event testing. Just one of those is Darren Gass, who had a run out in Wales this week in the Pirelli Mitsubishi Lancer, in readiness for the Pirelli Rally. Darren, who won the Pirelli Star Driver award, which brought him this drive, found the Mitsubishi fairly different from his Citroen C2, although it sounds as if conditions were very slippy. The forthcoming Pirelli Rally is the opener for the British Citroen C2 R2 Cup, and several of the contenders from the Irish series who were in Clonakilty for the West Cork Rally intend to make the trip. These include Marty McCormick and last year’s UK winner Martin Laverty. McCormick won the first part of the Clonakilty ‘double header’, but some mechanical problems contributed to Marty putting his Citroen off the road on the 2nd leg. Laverty also fell by the wayside in West Cork, but will be in action on the Pirelli. One driver who won’t is talented young Welshman Jason Pritchard, sidelined with a badly broken ankle following a road accident. Whereas there were a dozen C2R2’s in West Cork, there will only be about 8 on the Pirelli. Still on the Citroen theme, it is interesting that Simon Jean-Joseph is to compete on the Pirelli in the new ‘works’ Citroen C2R2 Max. Meanwhile, following a long struggle with shipping the car from Mexico and then sitting for nearly three days camped at the quayside in Belgium while the customs went through their procedures Shaun Gallagher’s Citroen C2 S1600 has at last arrived back into the UK. This allows just a couple of days for the car to be totally rebuilt and sent on its way for Shaun’s next event in Jordan. Life begins at 40 for Mullingar’s Jack Sleator, as after 20 years rallying he won his first rally outright, taking a clear victory on the Midland Stages. Jack had a really close tussle with Sean Gallagher, until Sean’s Subaru dropped back with a puncture. Really out of luck was No.1 seed Kevin Lynch, whose newly acquired Subaru blew its engine, the rear bumper also going on fire. Paul Kiely won GpN on the Midlands, which sort of absolved the memory of last year’s rally when he buried his Lancer. A new departure for Tarmac Champion Paul is that he is going to sit with Shaun Gallagher on the Jordan Rally, JWRC. The Irish Junior Championship class on the Midlands was won by Damien McCarthy/Eamonn Hayes, with Peter Wilson/John Kilmurray 2nd in their Civic 2nd. Richard Whelan/Patrick Crotty won the ‘Juniors’. Just who is leading the National Junior Class in the Championship is unclear. Mark Higgins had a brilliant run on the Border Counties to score GpN victory in the new MG S2000, and will almost certainly use the car on the Pirelli Rally. There doesn’t seem to be an entry for Mark on the Killarney Rally of the Lakes, next round of the Tarmac series, so hopefully that will come together. Richard Cathcart had a superb result on the Borders to score maximum Mitsubishi Lancer Evo points, while Daniel Barry also turned in a very impressive drive to 2nd in the Evos and move into the lead of the Challenge. Neil McCance was down the order a little early on but came through well to take 3rd in the Evo Challenge points, which made it a very successful day for drivers from this side of the Irish Sea. A few who weren’t so lucky included Phillip Morrow, who went out with a blown engine, and Keith Cronin, who was very nervous at the start and his Lancer slipped into a Kielder ditch a few miles into the first stage. Brian Patterson. |
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