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| West Cork Rally |
| RALLY NEWS No.1 - Pre Start - Saturday @ 08:08:44 |
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RALLY NEWS NO.1 Clonakilty/Saturday 08.00
This is the 31st running of the West Cork Rally, and once again the event has attracted a top class entry here to Clonakilty for what has become a rallying bonanza holiday weekend. The rally has a new Clerk of Course in Darren McCarthy (there have been only four previous C of C’s over all those years), and Darren has laid out a classic but compact route for the expected 151 starters. In addition there will be approx 19 Historics and 20 Juniors, plus a clutch of the ‘slowly sideways’ classic cars who will be running through some of the stages, not all. The Historics start at stage 5 and the juniors run on the Sunday afternoon stages. The main field tackle all 16 of what are brilliant stages. The rally is a counting round in several championships, including the Thomond Crystal Southern Four, the Citroen Racing Trophy and the Irish Mitsubishi Challenge.
Unfortunately there have been a couple more withdrawals from the top ten, with No.1 seed Donie O’Sullivan now non-starting and Brian O’Mahony having to withdraw his Super 1600 Clio.
Donie O’Sullivan and Paul Nagle were due to drive the Proton Super 2000, one of the new breed of rally cars. Paul is just back from co-driving Kris Meeke to a brilliant victory in Brazil, in the Peugeot version of the Super 2000, so is no stranger to these new cars. Donie, who won the rally here last year, is desperately disappointed that a paperwork snag means he will not get the opportunity to drive this brand new car. Similarly Brian O’Mahony is shattered that he can’t take the start. In theory his Clio Super 1600 is in top condition, but it appears that suddenly lateral movement has appeared in the crankshaft when the clutch is depressed, and of course that could wreck the very special engine.
John Dalton/Gwynfor Jones will still carry No.2 on their Darrian, but will lead the rally away. John told us that he has had some development work done to his Darrian over the winter, to increase the rear suspension travel, in an effort to make the car more stable over the bumps. Current Southern Four Champion Liam McCarthy is at 3, co-driven as usual by Kieran Murphy. They will drive their Derek McGeehan prepared Corolla WRC. Liam has come close but never won this West Cork Rally so maybe this will be his year. At 4 is English visitor Jim Harrison. Jim, who has the ebullient Harvey Bell in the hot seat of his McKinstry Subaru WRC, has always been rated as one of the quickest drivers around, but a two year lay-off from the sport means he’s battling hard to get back up to speed.
2005 West Cork winner Denis Cronin is at 5 in his Impreza WRC and Herefords’ Phil Collins runs at 6 in his fantastic Mk2 Escort. Then it’s Keith Cronin at 7. Keith had a new engine fitted to his Lancer on Thursday and tested it yesterday. All seems to be well with the car. His main objective this year is the British Championship and the intention originally was to do West Cork as a warm up. However seeing as there is an overlap in the two championships on the Ulster Rally, he has now decided to register for the Irish series. Alan Ring was to start at 8 but has withdrawn, so next on the road will be James Stafford in his Darrian.
Outside the top ten is a brilliant line-up of cars and drivers, and there promises to be some great battles amongst the modified cars, and indeed all the various classes. Highest seeded of the Citroen Racing Trophy contenders is Adrian McElhinney at 59, with Barry Evans at 60 and Paul Manton at 61. Current Citroen C2R2 Champion Marty McCormick is at 34 in his new C2R2 Max, and Marty has decided not to register for the Irish series this time as he is the only one so far with the new Max version. At the moment it looks as if there will 8 runners in the Trophy.
Some changes to the original published entry list include Frank Kelly starting at 17, Trevor Bustard (26) and Simon Kehoe (29) non-starting. Alister Wylie is now co-driving for Barry Evans and Dean Raftery is with Paul Manton. Clare Shorten is sitting in with Brian Davies and Donnacha O’Callaghan will be with Stanley Ballantine. Jason O’Callaghan is with John Curran at No.70. More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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