RALLY NEWS NO.4 End of stage 8 Edrom/Saturday
08.30
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 8
1st (2) Mark Higgins/Bryan Thomas (Focus WRC)
54.48.3
2nd (6) Tim McNulty/Eugene O'Donnell (Impreza
WRC) 55.06.5
3rd (3) Eugene Donnelly/Paul Kiely (Corolla WRC)
55.56.2
4th (7) Eamonn Boland/Francis Regan (Impreza
WRC) 56.05.2
5th (4) Derek McGarrity/Dermot O'Gorman (Impreza
WRC) 56.26.6
6th (5) Austin MacHale/Brian Murphy (Focus WRC)
58.12.7
7th (26) Philip Morrow/Glenn Patterson (Lancer
N) 59.12.8
8th (15) Rory Galligan/Greg Shinnors (Lancer N)
59.22.2
9th (24) Ryan Champion/Craig Thorley (Lancer N)
59.34.9
10th (18) Garry Jennings/Rory Kennedy (Lancer
N) 1.00.00.6
11th (28) Roy White/Stephen McAuley (Lancer N)
1.00.01.9
12th (40) Stephen Petch/Michael Wilkinson (Impreza
N) 1.00.18.1
Perhaps it was his rush to get to the bathroom, suffering
as he is from food poisoning, whatever, Tim McNulty was fastest
through the opening stage of today’s 2nd day of this
Jim Clark Rally. Tim looked absolutely miserable at stage finish
but his Pierse Construction backed Impreza WRC looked fantastic in
the early morning sunshine. This is a real feature of the rally,
very high temperatures, bone dry roads. Top co driver Claire Mole
was giving a helping hand at stage finish. She lives not very far
away and was saying that at the start of this Edrom stage it was
always damp and slippy under the trees, but this morning it was
boen dry.
First on the road Mark Higgins said “We were still being
careful, testing the surface, taking no chances”. Eugene Donnelly
was 3rd on the road behind McNulty, he finished the
stage with his Corolla WRC sprouting lumps of mud and grass from
the rims, Eugene explaining “I was trying very hard, Philip
Moynihan has pulled out all the tops for the tyres, and we were
trying to make up lost time, and got caught out at a junction”.
Derek McGarrity pulled his Subaru in at stage finish to change a
punctured right rear tyre. Despite the flat wheel McGarrity only
dropped a handful of seconds to the top times. Interestingly, the
side of Derek’s car is covered in oil and Austin MacHale, running
one car behind, felt that he could see some traces of oil on the
road and was being a wee bit careful. Austin’s earlier worries
about oil pressure were indeed borne out when his engineer Tom
Gahan discovered a collapsed filter. The pressure this morning is
back up to 3.5 bars having dropped as slow as 0.6 last night.
Phillip Morrow was the first of the group N cars on the
road this morning, Phillip and co driver Glenn Patterson very
stiff and sore before the start, were helped along a bit by a
couple of phsio guys from this new MSA Elite squad. There you are
now. Fastest group N this morning was Rory Galligan on 6.24.3.
Roy White did 6.30.3. Phillip Morrow 6.33.1. David Higgins
6.33.9, having changed a lot of the set up on his car. Galligan
was saying that he was nearly caught out on the wrong tyres. The
temperature over at the service area was a lot lower than it is
here in the rolling countryside around Chirnside. Garry Jennings
said that his only problem in the stage was the acute left
junction. His older model Lancer does not have the hand brake
mechanism to allow him to slide the car round, and he had to sort
of go past the junction and come back at it, costing quite a few
seconds. His time was still a respectable 6.40.9.
Two further retirements on this 8th stage
include Colm Murphy whose Group n Impreza was 15th
overnight but has broken down in the stage. Car 38 Dave
Taylor/Paul Barrett in another group N Impreza has reached stage
finish but looks to be going no further, something broken in the
transmission.
More news later. BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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