| RALLY NEWS NO.1 Saturday morning..early
Back in June World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb came to Ireland for the first time, to the Donegal Rally. It was a learning experience for the Frenchman and his Citroen team, winning the rally a bonus. Now the Citroen team and Sebastien are back here in Ireland for this Murphy Construction backed Cork ‘20’ Rally, and its all stations go for them in final preparation for Rally Ireland. All the top cars looked stunningly fast at the ‘shakedown’ test today out near Watergrasshill, but Loeb seemed particularly quick. Checking times wasn’t of the essence but Loeb’s Citroen was stopping the clock at the end of the 7.8kms of narrow twisty road at not much, just 18 secs, over the 3 minute mark. And the stage included two chicanes!
Sebastien learned a lot about his Citroen C4’s handling over the Irish tarmac roads on his last visit. Now the team has built in changes to the suspension, and Loeb will surely be blindingly quick over these Cork special stages. His team mate Dani Sordo is also in a works Citroen, the slightly older model Xsara, and with its active transmission set-up he won’t be hanging around either. Once a racer always a racer. The service area for the shakedown was at KartWorld, and at the lunch break Dani was straight on to a kart, and was sensationally quick! Also at the shakedown was the young Finnish Ford works driver Mikko Hirvonen. He is on his first visit to Ireland, but wasn’t a bit fazed by our roads and said “I like driving rally cars everywhere, asphalt or gravel, it does not matter but snow is best fun!” Mikko would have liked some rain this weekend, as he felt it would have been more representative of likely conditions in November. Still he seemed very happy with his Ford Focus. The engineers made fine suspension changes during the day, nothing dramatic. Having said that, Mikko and his engineer Christian Loriaux confirmed that they plan to try something different with the suspension at every service, make full use of their time here.
The fans may be planning to flock here in their thousands this weekend, but it won’t be just to see the World Rally stars. There is the Global Group Tarmac Championship to be settled as well. Reigning Champion Eugene Donnelly is odds on to retain his Title, but Mark Higgins in the Pirelli Subaru will be doing everything in his power to deprive him. Eugene was in fine form at the shakedown stage, more like the Eugene of old, and he was trying a different set-up on his Reid Motorsport Subaru, letting the rear of the car move around a bit and he seemed really happy with it.
Outside of that, there is a terrific line-up of cars and drivers. Gareth MacHale tested his Focus on a road outside Clonmel and seemed to be well pleased with it. Gareth has Craig Parry co-driving this time. Tim McNulty at 8 in his Pierse backed Subaru is another in fine form, as is Eamonn Boland at 9 in his Subaru. Eamonn plans to drive his Focus WRC on Rally Spain next week. Austin MacHale was to run at 10, but he has decided instead to help his sons Gareth and Aaron in their respective Fords. Some other non-starters from the top end of the list include Kris Meeke, Stephen Murphy, & Derek McGarrity. Outside the top ten there are plenty more world rally cars with drivers such as English visitor Roger Duckworth, Michael Barrable, Patrick Elliott, Ray Breen and a whole lot more who will be fighting for top 10 places. Donegal man Hugh Martin Doherty is seeded down at No.22. His Impreza WRC S12 has been back to Prodrive to get the engine checked and he should be well on the pace here.
Further facets to the rally include the GpN battle, with Colm Murphy bidding to retain his Tarmac Title. Kevin O’Donoghue is the only driver now who can also take the honours. There is a host of further top Group N drivers and their own battle should be pretty hectic.
Further stories from the Shakedown include: Kevin Kelleher’s newly acquired Lancer had fuel pump problems which are now resolved. Owen Murphy’s Mitsubishi had the oil plug fall out of the gearbox and he thought the car was going to go on fire. John Quill’s Citroen C2R2 suffered two punctures. Brian O’Mahony’s Clio stopped with a burst radiator. He does not have a spare and his engineer John O’Leary is having to use all his ingenuity to solve the problem.
More news from Macroom: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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