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RALLY NEWS NO.4 End of Stage 3/Sunday 2.45
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 3 THE CASHEN
1st (4) Keith Cronin/Anthony O'Conaill (Lancer N) 24.53
2nd (2) Kevin & Martin Kelleher (Lancer N) 24.59
3rd (1) Kevin O'Donoghue/Joe O'Leary (Lancer) 25.19
4th (9) Thomas Fitzmaurice/Fionn Foley (Lancer N) 25.22
5th (8) Eamonn Daly/David Horan (Lancer N) 25.50
6th (3) Alan Ring/Adrian Deasy (Impreza N) 26.04
7th (5) Anthony O'Halloran/Charlie McEnery (Manta) 26.07
8th (10) John Kearney/Denis O'Connell (Escort) 26.08
9th (164) Mick Moloney/Marie Casey (Escort) 26.15
10th (17) Fintan Canty/Denis O'Mahony (Escort) 26.18
11th (22) Fergus O’Meara/Liam Brennan (Escort) 26.19
12th (15) Sean Lyons/John Devine (Impreza N) 26.23
Even the OO cars were slithering into the ditch on stage 3, The Cashen, a re run from earlier. A slight smearing of oil and mud pulled out from the ditches made the 14.65km stage a real test. Kevin Kelleher was fastest with a time of 8m30s. Keith Cronin was on 8.35 and Kevin O’Donoghue 8.47. The sweat was streaming off Kevin Kelleher’s face when he pulled into the junction at the end of the stage in Ballyduff village. Kevin commented. “Maybe there is oil in places, it was slippy certainly but we had intermediate tyres on this time and they worked well.” Kevin O’Donoghue had the steering column fixed on his Lancer and although he suffered a small spin in the stage he still set a very good time. Keith Cronin was disappointed to be 5s down on Kelleher although he still leads by 6s overall going into the final stage. Keith perhaps was a bit ambitious in his tyre choice, sticking with slick tyres when maybe he would have been better with an intermediate.
Thomas Fitzmaurice was slightly off the pace on that one although the TLI man denied there was any problem, but at the same time he jumped out of his Lancer immediately and started to check the rear wheel. Eamonn Daly was certainly much more on the pace than he had been earlier. Eamonn was just 2s slower than Fitzmaurice on that 3rd stage and pronounced himself a lot happier with his Lancer.
Anthony O’Halloran kept up his momentum to lead the 2 wheel drive contenders, Anthony a few seconds faster than John Kearney through the stage which means that Anthony got ahead in the overall classification by 1s. Mick Moloney and Fintan Canty turned in superb times as well so that there is virtually nothing to choose in the battle for the runner up spot in class 13 behind John Kearney. Mick McQuaid is 2nd in cl.14 to O’Halloran, Mick with another good time through stage 3.
Mark Sheahan seems to have put the snatching brakes on his Clio S1600 to the back of his head and he is up to 14th o/a and leading his class by 18s from Ian Roche in his similar Renault Clio. Dave Randles has retired his Almera with a blown engine. Christy Carey and his co-driver Richard Talbot are having a good run and their Impreza is now up into the top 20. William Cavanagh is leading class 12 in his Escort and John Paul Ruth is in front in class 7 in his Peugeot 206. More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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