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Irish Notes 8th January 2008.
Dungannon Motor Club are once again running their annual Rally
navigation school, a must for budding navigators and a useful tool for
some more experienced co-drivers wishing to brush up on their map
skills. The Classes will be held one night per week in Dungannon Rugby
Club, running for six weeks starting 7.30 p.m. Wednesday 16th January.
For full details visit the club website at
http://www.dungannonmotorclub.com/
Killarney's Kevin O'Donohue and co-driver Joe O'Leary picked up their
Southern Four Championship trophy's at the championship prizegiving last
Saturday evening. Held at the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork, the event
was hailed as a great success. This year's championship will kick off
with the West Cork Rally in March with all further information available
from the championship website at
http://www.southern4rallychampionship.com.
Stage rallying gets back under way in Northern Ireland next week with
the New Year Stages Rally at Kirkistown on Saturday the 19th January.
The rally run by The 500 MRCI and assisted by The UAC has become the now
traditional season opener and a great precursor to the Northern Ireland
Championship opener at the same venue on February 16th.
Mid Antrim MC have announced a couple of changes to their forthcoming
Ballypatrick Stages Rally on the 2nd of February. This year will see the
rally run just two longer stages four times and Organiser supplied
route notes will be included in the entry fee. The Club then has the
task of running their clubmans rally on the 1st of March and the Stephen
Mawhinny backed event will use a similar format to last year with 18
lane based stages in the Doagh Antrim Area.
Donegal Motor Club has got a late date change for their Forestry Rally
in February and it has now moved one day forward to Sunday 24th
February. The reason for the move is quite simply that Omagh MC planned
to run their Spring Rally on the same Saturday and with both events in
such close proximity to the Donegal border forests it made sense for one
to move. The Donegal event is once again 2wd only and will include four
stages done twice in the general area of Donegal Town.
The big event this weekend is the annual Autosport show at the
Birmingham NEC which normally sees a high Irish contingent making the
trip to the mainland. Philip Morrow will be presented as the new works
Mitsubishi Driver for the BRC on Thursday as his prize for winning last
season's Evo Challenge. There is speculation though that Darren Gass
could be named as an effective team mate to Morrow, although it is far
from confirmed, but is looking likely, that Gass will also drive an ADR
run Lancer as part of his Pirelli drive on the BRC instead of a proposed
Impreza.
Seamus Devine took his first ever rally win with victory at Maiden City
MC's Turkey Run at Ahgadowey just before the New Year. This is only
Devines third season in the sport and he is now rapidly gaining speed
and confidence in his Impreza WRC. Derek McGheehan drove the Eugene
Donnelly Fabia WRC to second while John and Mandy McKeown rounded of the
top three in their Escort Cosworth.
On a slightly different theme, Martin McGrath, part of the RPM team has
been in touch about an interesting event in September. The Scally Rally,
a novel charity based event is coming to Ireland in September. The
concept is to complete the event in a vehicle worth only £100! (which
can be sold for this value at the finish) and to have as much fun as
possible while driving in a fairly unchallenging way around the route.
RPM have already committed to a programme of the event which will start
in Belfast on the 5th September and finish in Cork four days later. The
entry fee is £150 and entries open on
31st January. All paperwork can be done online at
http://www.scallyrally.co.uk/ and
apparently entries fill up quickly.
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