The big news from the National Rally on stage 6 is that Darren Gass had a fantastic time to extend his lead and that was despite car trouble. Unfortunately local hero Frank Kelly who was 5th overnight in his Ford Escort has ground to a halt near the finish of the stage with a mechanical problem. When Darren Gass came to the end of the 25km stage he said. “The car is way down on power and has no go up hills. The differential pressures are all wrong and there are flashing warning lights on the dashboard”. When Darren realised he was over 30s faster than Eugene Donnelly and nearly a minute up on McGarrity he could hardly take it in. For his part Donnelly said that he had picked too soft a compound tyre and then had put cuts on the back ones as well, and it just didn’t work. He was still disappointed to drop so much time in one stage to Gass, especially having beaten him on the last stage last night.
Derek McGarrity had more brake issues with his Mini WRC and then ran out of road on a square right and stalled the engine. Kenny McKinstry reported rear dampers to be not working properly on his Impreza WRC and he doesn’t have spares. Steve Perez had launch control failure on his Focus WRC and that affected the hand brake but otherwise it went OK. Drew Stewart was slowed by a bad vibration at the rear of his Escort but then a load of mud and stones, which appeared to be the equivalent weight of a bag of spuds, fell out of a wheel at the stop control. Drew was one of several drivers who reported passing Frank Kelly’s Escort that was going slowly through the stage until eventually it stopped.
Adrian Hetherington had a good time this morning to jump from 10th to 7th. Geoffrey Dolan in 8th picked too soft a tyre this morning. He lost time yesterday when he had problems with his Escort paddle gear change. Wesley Patterson has now moved into 10th and leads the Historic section in his Escort. Wesley resolved before the start of that tough 6th stage to make no mistakes and not to hand brake around junctions, and it certainly paid off. Trevor Ferguson is lying 11th o/a and top Group N in the National Rally. He said. “A great stage, a bit of everything”.
Fintan McGrady is up to 12th o/a in his Escort. Fintan was in the top 10 yesterday but then his Escort spent a minute in a field and he also got held up behind Damien Toner’s accident. John Mulholland switched from his Skoda WRC to his Puma for this event. He lost time last night when the lights failed.
More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON (with thanks to Michael Patterson from the ends of stages)
