RALLY NEWS NO.1 Clayton Hotel Galway/Friday afternoon
Its all stations go for this Safety Direct Galway International Rally, with the top cars crossing the Eyre Square start ramp marking the opener to what promises to be an exciting Motorsport weekend. Clerk of the Course Gary Leonard has laid on a challenging route of special stages for the crews, and hundreds of marshals are in readiness to ensure the safe passage of the crews. African Rally Champion Conrad Rautenbach is No.1 seed in his Citroen Xsara World Rally Car. Conrad is on his first visit to the Galway Rally and he is driving here as a warm up for Rally Ireland. He has a new co-driver, Daniel Barritt, so he is in at the deep end just a little bit and will probably not run 2nd on the road on the rally itself.
Running at No.2 is the young German driver Aaron Burkart. Aaron has switched from a Citroen C2 to a Suzuki Swift for this season and this will be his first outing in the car. He has had little time to acclimatise to the new car, and despite the fact that he competed on the Fastnet Rally last year he is still very much on foreign territory here, so may take a bit of time to find his feet. Current Tarmac Champion Eamonn Boland is at 3 and drives the same Impreza WRC which carried him to the Tarmac Title. Eamonn was down in Tipperary yesterday doing a bit of testing, and reports all well. At 4 is Gareth MacHale and he was testing his Focus WRC alongside Eamonn Boland and reported all fine.
Four times Tarmac Champion Eugene Donnelly, with Paddy Toner co-driving this time, starts at 5. Eugene drives a Skoda Fabia WRC. He has had some work done to the car’s engine management to make it even sharper, and in general appears in top form. He did very little rallying last year, his one main outing being a successful run on the Donegal International, and is hungry to get going again and plans a full Tarmac Championship campaign this year. Rounding off the top half dozen is Tim McNulty in his Subaru. Tim has proven time and again that he has the speed to fight for the lead on any rally, but good fortune seems to pass him by at times, however, who knows, perhaps ’09 could be his year.
That’s just a taster of the level of competition here. Kevin Lynch, former two times Tarmac Champion Derek McGarrity, Peadar Hurson and Aaron MacHale make up the rest of the top ten. Young Darren Gass was on the reserves, running with 144 on his hired Subaru, and will probably be slotted in just behind the top ten. Darren is a super driver, but has only driven an Impreza WRC once before, in Lurgan Park, so he is on a learning curve.
Behind that are the leading GpN crews, with current Tarmac GpN Champion Kevin Kelleher at 12 (11 was to be Austin MacHale, but he is non-starting). Kevin is driving the same Lancer as he had last year, and one of his main jobs getting the car ready for here was cleaning out the confetti left behind from when his brother Martin used the Lancer as his wedding car in Clonakilty on New Year’s Eve. Alister Wylie has stepped in to co-drive for Kevin this time in place of Martin. Damien Tourish is behind Kelleher, the exceptionally quick Donegal man in his same Lancer this season, but now re-sprayed red.
James Foley is at 15 and he is debuting the new Lancer Evo X. Being a new car, there were a few technical things to be sorted out this week, but James seems to be on course ok. Further down there is a plethora of Escorts and they should provide their own brand of exciting all sideways action. In addition the rally has several sub-divisions to include the Fiesta Sporting Trophy, the Historic Championship and the Junior Championship. It was also to include the new Excel Championship, but that has been put on hold. There have been a few withdrawals from the entry list as printed in the programme, but all in all it looks as if we have a great rally in store this weekend. More news in the morning: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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