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| Manx International Rally |
| RALLY NEWS No.1 - Pre Start - Friday @ 08:48:03 |
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RALLY NEWS NO.1 Grandstand/Friday morning
Around 125 cars altogether, counting all the different sections of this Rally Isle of Man, will tackle the special stages at various times over the next two days. The flagship is the British Championship International section, where there should be 39 starters. Some of those 38 are chasing Tarmac Championship points, some will be on the trail of Citroen Racing Trophy kudos in their C2R2 Max’s, and six are contesting the Suzuki Cup. Other drivers such as local crew Nigel and Michaela Cannell are out to enjoy themselves on their ‘local’ rally, and if there is a bit of glory with a top result at the end, all the better!
The main story though will be the battle for British Championship points amongst the drivers at the top of the list with the main spotlight, certainly initially, on Mark Higgins and Keith Cronin. The rally has been streamlined this year, Rally Director Richard Bargery cutting the format from three days to two and also cutting back the reconnaissance time. This may help Mark Higgins, four times a winner here and with immense knowledge of the stages built up over the years, so much so that a reduced ‘recce’ time won’t affect him so much.
Keith Cronin on the other hand has only made the trip over from the South west corner of Ireland to the Island once before. That was last year when he won GpN on the National Rally in May, but in terms of knowledge of the Island roads, he falls far short of Higgins. However, Keith is a quick learner as well as a phenomenally talented driver, so it is going to be very interesting indeed to see how he shapes up this time. He has had two wins in the Championship so far this year and has a slender two-point lead over Mark. Keith said before the start that he is not out to win the rally, just get a decent finish and score some points. Mark has only one objective and that is to win!
Young Alastair Fisher is 3rd in the seeding here and 3rd in the British Championship, which isn’t too bad for a young man who only started rallying a Lancer earlier this year. At 4 is another talented young driver, Adam Gould and he drives the Pirelli ‘N14’ Subaru Impreza. David Bogie at 5 is driving the new Lancer Evo X , his prize drive for winning the Evo Challenge, and indeed this ‘promising young driver’ theme continues on down through the top seeds.
Further down the list some fascinating battles are promised, particularly for supremacy in the ‘R3’ category where the highest seeded competitors are the Finns Matti Rantanen/Mikko Lukka in their Clio Ragnotti, and they start at 14. Also in ‘R3’ are some of the Fiesta Trophy contestants who have opted to do the full two days of competition. Then their times for certain stages will be extracted to count towards the Fiesta Sporting Trophy results, which will be decided on Friday’s Challenge stages.
All very complicated but no doubt it will work out! The level of competition amongst all the Fiesta guys is fantastically high, but Craig Breen, Mark Donnelly, Kris Hall and Andrew Leece should be right up there. Also in ‘R3’ is Irish crew Daragh O’Riordan/Sean McCarthy and they will drive their Corsa this time instead of the Clio that was damaged in a rally accident in Tipperary a couple of weeks ago.
The ‘R2’ class should mainly be the domain of the Citroen C2R2 Max competitors, and Irish Citroen Champion Marty McCormick should be the benchmark there, although Jason Pritchard, Mark Gamble and Andrew Hockridge, all of whom now have the ‘Max’ specification C2R2’s, should give Marty a run for his money.
Non-starters from the published International list include Robert Swann (No9), Alan Carmichael (No10), Kyle Orr (No19) & Phil Nijs (No22). Changes to co-drivers include Kirsty Riddick now sitting with Jonathan Greer and Tony McDaid with Mark Donnelly. The International is only part of the story of this Rally Isle of Man, so all in all it should be a very interesting weekend! Main story from the Shakedown is that Kris Hall crashed his Fiesta. With no pre-start parc ferme the team was able to carry out repairs and the car should be OK to start.
More news to follow: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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