RALLY NEWS NO.7
Service/Letterkenny/Saturday 12.15
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE
9 Brenagh 2
1st (3) Andrew
Nesbitt/James O'Brien (Impreza WRC) 48.44.2
2nd (1) Eugene
Donnelly/Paul Kiely (Corolla WRC) 48.45.6
3rd (2) Derek
McGarrity/Dermot O'Gorman (Impreza WRC) 48.53.0
4th (7) Tim
McNulty/Eugene O'Donnell (Impreza WRC) 49.42.6
5th (6) Eamonn
Boland/Francis Regan (Impreza WRC) 49.51.9
6th (4) Austin
MacHale/Brian Murphy (Focus WRC) 50.55.7
7th (11) Cathal
Arthurs/John McElhinney (Accent WRC) 52.38.9
8th (24) Seamus
Leonard/Gerry McVeigh (Lancer N) 52.44.3
9th (9) Steve
Perez/Neil Dashfield (Focus WRC) 52.49.4
10th (16) Kevin
Barrett/Barry Goodman (Impreza WRC) 52.49.8
11th (29) Roy
White/Stephen McAuley (Lancer N) 53.02.9
12th (23) Garry
Jennings/Rory Kennedy (Lancer N) 53.14.4
The second run over Brenagh, stage
9, brought more than its fair share of excitement. Andrew
Nesbitt was fastest to slightly increase his narrow lead over
Eugene Donnelly. Kevin Lynch retired his Subaru from 4th
place following a major accident. Paul Harris retired from 7th
place when his Subaru just stopped. Shaun Gallagher lost his
group N lead when he stopped to change a punctured tyre on his
Lancer. Colm Murphy retired when he had an accident in his
group N Impreza. Happily there were no reports of any injuries
in any of the accidents.
Out at the front of the
rally Andrew Nesbitt finished the stage and took time out to
tell Michael Patterson ….”It rained for the first 2 miles of the
stage. We were on dry weather tyres, it was quite a struggle.
The car’s going well.” The latter comment referred to the
earlier gearbox trouble. The McKinstry team changed the box on
Andrew’s car at service after stage 8, Andrew feeling that the
change was a bit reluctant. A Prodrive engineer pointing to the
computer read outs and observing that the engine was spiking in
its revs, which did indicate a problem. Interestingly, this
gearbox that he has in now was actually Paul Harris’ from
yesterday. The spare box for Nesbitt’s car went into Harris’
car last night, the box that came out of Harris’ car was
repaired overnight and now it is in Andrew’s machine.
Second on the road and 2nd
in the classification, Eugene Donnelly, had been having some
gear change, or as he calls it, gear cut problems. The engineers
had worked at the ECU but Eugene felt that if anything it has
made it worse instead of better. Derek McGarrity reported a good
clean run, the road was a bit slippy but it went well. Kevin
Lynch on the other hand went off the road at very high speed.
His co driver Gordon Noble has sent us a text message to say
that they damaged a wheel, were pushing on and got off line at a
bump. Someone else has reported to us that it was on a very
fast left hander up across the moorland and the Subaru is
several fields off the road. No news as yet as why Paul Harris
stopped, but the following Steve Perez said that he appeared to
be on the mobile phone, possibly trying to get an engineer.
Kevin Barrett, up into the
top 10 now in his Subaru and going well got a hell of a fright
in stage 9 when he came round a corner and there was a
helicopter hovering just at eye level beside the road, the
Triton Showers man saying “It was very disconcerting, if I had
gone off at all I would have been straight into the
helicopter”.
Shaun Gallagher was more than
annoyed with himself, don’t really know why he got the puncture
but he was well down in the dumps at stage finish. Shaun and his
co driver Charlie who are both tyre men, messed up changing the
wheel and they lost well over 4 minutes. This leaves Seamus
Leonard now leads group N from Roy White with Garry Jennings 3rd.
Colm Murphy was further back in the category but as reported
earlier he has had an accident and is out of the race. More news
later. BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON
www.rallynews.net
(with thanks to Michael Patterson, Pamela Ballantine & Kieran
O’Neill)
* LIVE SMS RESULTS: Text RALLY ITC
to 53503 for Irish mobiles. Text RALLY ITC to 60066 for UK
mobiles. (30cents Irl. 25p UK)
