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RALLY NEWS
NO.7
Sunday morning/End of Stage 9/10.45
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 9 Rossmore
1st (2) Tim McNulty/Anthony Nestor (Impreza WRC) 1.00.50.2
2nd (7) Michael Barrable/Dermot O'Gorman (Focus WRC) 1.01.18.1
3rd (5) Liam McCarthy/Kieran Murphy (Impreza WRC) 1.02.33.0
4th (6) Denis Cronin/Helen O'Sullivan (Impreza WRC) 1.03.01.0
5th (16) Tony Davies/Brian Hardie (Impreza WRC) 1.03.20.4
6th (8) Jon Ingram/Ian Allsop (Impreza WRC) 1.04.46.1
7th (10) John Dalton/Gwynfor Jones (Darrian) 1.05.27.1
8th (12) Kevin & Martin Kelleher (Lancer N) 1.06.20.4
9th (25) Kevin O'Donoghue/Joe O'Leary (Escort) 1.06.40.5
10th (48) John Foley/Jonathan Waterman (Impreza N) 1.06.42.6
11th (27) Willie Power/Liam Brennan (Darrian) 1.07.09.1
12th (51) Washington James/Aled Jones (Darrian) 1.07.18.7
Tim McNulty opened his scoring for today with a fastest time through
stage 9, Rossmore, while his nearest contender Michael Barrable
was kicking himself for having stalled his Focus WRC at the hairpin
in the stage and losing 8s to the flying Subaru in front.
McNulty said. “We could have been quicker, but I’m taking
no chances.” Barrable went on to say about the stall
that he had to go through the whole complicated start procedure
of the Focus which takes seconds which seem like a lifetime.
Interestingly, Liam McCarthy stalled at the same junction, as did
Jon Ingram.
Denis Cronin was a few seconds off the pace of the leaders. Denis
had all sorts of problems last year with predictable handling with
his Subaru. It was at long last discovered that there was
some tiny intermittent gremlin in the Subaru ECU. This affects
differential and brake balance set up. The net result was
that Denis had many scares in the car. The Impreza went over
to Buckleys and they eventually found out that there was something
wrong with the ECU. The car is running and ECU out of George
Cullen’s Impreza for this event and it has completely transformed
the car. It was expected that Denis would make a real charge
over this morning’s Rossmore stage but it didn’t work
out that way. He was over 4s down on McCarthy in front and not too
happy about his tyre choice. Still, there are still a lot
of miles to be covered today.
Kevin Kelleher continues to lead group N in the “The Big Fella”
Lancer but he dropped quite a few seconds on that opening stage
to John Foley. Kelleher’s overnight lead was 33s and
in one fell swoop Foley has reduced that to 22s. John Dalton
continues to lead the modified section and he said at stage finish
that he was going to ease back over the next few stages and try
to hold his position. Kevin O’Donoghue is still the best of
the Mk2 Escorts and he had a great run through Rossmore this morning.
We have unconfirmed reports that Martin McGee & Damien Crawford,
15th overnight, have crashed their Escort on today’s opening
stage and held up the cars behind.
Overnight class leaders included: John Dalton in his Darrian leads
class 14 from Kevin O’Donoghue (Escort). Kevin Kelleher leads
cl.4 for the big GpN cars from John Foley with James O’Sullivan
3rd. Willie Power led cl.13 in his Darrian from Wesley Patterson
(Escort). Phillip Cross led class 15 in his Escort Cosworth
from John Hickey in his “Fubaru”. Stephen Clery
in his Peugeot 106 led cl.6 from the similar Peugeot of Pat Casey.
Martin Lordan led cl.9 in his Fiesta and David Guest in the Clonakilty
Black Pudding Peugeot led class 10. Dave Randles in the ex works
Almera led cl.7. Billy Hayes led cl.3 in his Civic Type R.
Andrew Fanning led cl.5 in his Puma. Tom Dunne class 2 in his Peugeot
106.
Todd Falvey led the Historic section overnight in his Porsche, Todd
just over 20s ahead of Don Moynihan’s Mk1 Escort. Mark Sheehan
in another Mk1 Escort was 3rd. More news later.
BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net |
