RALLY NEWS NO.1 Clayton Hotel Galway/Friday evening 7pm
For rally fans the cup of joy overflows this weekend here in Galway, with one of the best entries ever seen on an Irish rally ready to do battle. Ireland may be small country, but in rallying terms there are more WRC machines per head of population than anywhere, and this weekend we have a fair slice of them out on the stages. Adding extra significance to the Eyre Square Ceremonial Start is that it marks the beginning of a new era in the Irish Tarmac Championship under the sponsorship of Global Group.

Heading the entry is two times former World Champion Marcus Gronholm in the ‘works Ford Focus WRC. At No.2 is Ireland’s most exciting young driver, Gareth MacHale, driving the only ’06 Ford Focus WRC in private hands. At 3 is British Champion Mark Higgins, driving a Pirelli backed Subaru WRC S11, at 4 is top privateer Eamonn Boland, a former International winner. Triple Tarmac Champion Eugene Donnelly is at 5 and he drives the first ‘private’ Subaru Impreza WRC S12. Former multiple Tarmac Champion and Galway Rally winner Austin MacHale is at No.6. Last year’s Killarney Rally winner Tim McNulty is at 7: Kevin Lynch at 8 is the current NI Rally Champion, and young Welshman Gareth Jones, seeded at 9 in a newly acquired Focus WRC. Jones spearheads the new Reid Motorsport Team and when asked was everything looking good he replied. “My cheeks are sore from smiling!”

The only ‘blip’ from amongst the top drivers is that Peadar Hurson is non-starting. Peadar did his recce last weekend, but then went down with flu. On Tuesday he then asked Kris Meeke to set his Subaru up for him, which Kris did, and the car is here now in Galway ready to go, but Peadar is just not fit enough to drive. No such worries for the other top drivers. Many of them were out near Peterswell today, testing their cars over the Francis Gap road. Gronholm was his usual forthright self and when he stepped out of his Focus said, “The roads are not quite what I expected, not so jumpy, and not so many stone walls. To be honest I don’t enjoy wet and slippy tarmac rallies.” Marcus went on to say that his Focus seemed to be set up OK for the roads, although there seemed to be a small problem with an engine oil warning light, but perhaps that it was only a faulty sensor. In the light of the bright sunshine today it seemed strange for Marcus to comment on the slippy roads, but that was a sentiment echoed by many of the other drivers. However the roads were drying rapidly and the forecast is for really good weather over the weekend. A bit ironic really, when Gronholm is really here for a test for Rally Ireland in November when conditions really are expected to be wet, slippy and jumpy!

When Gareth MacHale brought his Focus into service, his co-driver Paul Nagle rolled his eyes skywards, testimony to a few ‘moments’. One of them was when Gareth took a jump very hard and cricked his neck despite wearing his HANS device. Gareth just laughed, and said, ‘Not a lot of grip, perhaps if we soften the suspension a little and get the car to lean, get some heat in the tyres, it will be better. If I put a scratch on this car I’ll be getting a one way ticket to Outer Mongolia!” In truth once Marcus Gronholm and Gareth MacHale got their first few runs over they settled down and everything seemed fine.

Some of the top drivers tested their cars earlier this week, amongst them Eugene Donnelly. He said of his Subaru, “Really good, well pleased but we have set everything up for the usual slippy wet Galway and now we’re looking for dry weather settings!” Kevin Lynch was testing today and he didn’t seem too happy as the Harper Motorsport engineers worked at his new Focus WRC and he reported. “We have a few issues with the brakes and suspension set up, but now is the time to sort it out.” His co-driver Gordon Noble said. “I’m sitting so low in the car that I have given up trying to look out, you literally can see nothing!” (Reading the notes by the seat of his pants then??)

Looking beyond those first few cars there are many more tremendous WRC and Group N machines as well as many class contenders, the new Fiesta Sporting Trophy drivers, Historic competitors and so it goes on. Further changes to the top of the entry list include – Martin Doherty non-starting because of business commitments. Keith Cronin is also a non-starter having damaged his Lancer in a testing accident on the Borlin stage yest4erday. George Cullen has Diarmuid Falvey now co-driving, the pair lucky to make the start following a testing accident on the Black Road stage when their Subaru landed on its roof! A late change to the rally is that Stage 9, which was also to be stage 12 and 15, is no longer running because of a very sad bereavement.
BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net For SMS results and news to your mobile text RALLY ITC to 53030 in Ireland and 60066 in the UK. Texts cost 25p/30c. Text RALLY STOP to stop at any time. Provided by stagetimes.com