RALLY NEWS NO.5
Millstreet Service/Saturday 4pm
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 6
Gortnagane
1st (1) Andrew Nesbitt/James O'Brien (Impreza WRC) 55.56
2ND (3) Eugene Donnelly/Paul Kiely (Corolla WRC) 56.24
3RD (9) Kevin Lynch/Gordon Noble (Impreza WRC) 56.40
4th (6) Eamonn Boland/Francis Regan (Impreza WRC) 56.46
5th (2) Derek McGarrity/Dermot O'Gorman (Impreza WRC) 56.51
6th (5) Peadar Hurson/Glenn Patterson (Impreza WRC) 57.15
7th (4) Austin MacHale/Brian Murphy (Focus WRC) 57.36
8th (7) Tim McNulty/Eugene O'Donnell (Impreza WRC) 57.54
9th (8) Denis Cronin/Helen O'Sullivan (Impreza WRC) 58.38
10th (28) Colm Murphy/Ger Loughrey (Impreza N) 1.00.19
On the first stage after lunch time service Eugene Donnelly and Kevin
Lynch tied for fastest, both recording 7m54s for the shortened stage. Derek
McGarrity was next up on 7.57 and then it was Andrew Nesbitt with 7.58. This
was the first stage of the day that Nesbitt wasn’t fastest. He put this down
to pure tyre choice, Molls Gap being as dry as a bone. Andrew went for a
slightly safe compound. He redressed the balance on stage 6 Gortnagane with a
fastest time of 11.39. Eugene Donnelly was 11.40 and Kevin Lynch 11.42. Derek
McGarrity was right out of the picture on a time of 12.03, Derek thinking he
had a front right puncture on his Subaru.
Eugene Donnelly commented after Gortnagane. “In
the dry the car is perfect but we just can’t get the settings right for the
wet slippery roads. It works so well on dry abrasive tarmac.” Ironically it
has always been on wet slippy stuff, both on tarmac and in the forest, where
Donnelly has excelled. This problem surely, certainly, can’t be down to the
driver. Derek McGarrity was quickly out of his Subaru when he arrived here at
service. He produced a tyre pressure gauge out of the door pocket of the
Subaru and checked the front right Pirelli. The pressure was correct, the
tread looked good, Derek quickly came to the conclusion that there was
something damaged in the steering or the suspension to give that shaky rattly
feeling similar to a puncture. One of the things that he did take into account
was that the top Pirelli runners have “mousse inserts” which sometimes can be
a bit deceptive. But it certainly wasn’t that, the tyre was reading the
correct pressure. Austin MacHale set 5th quickest time on Molls
Gap, just 1s behind Nesbitt, but was off the pace in Gortnagane, Austin at a
loss to understand why. He did say “We found a problem with the catalytic
converter, we think it was a bit blocked, so the car went a bit better over
Molls, we don’t know what went wrong in Gortnagane”. Kevin Lynch looked
quietly confident when he arrived into service. Denis Cronin seemed to have an
abnormally quick time for stage 6. Tim McNulty had a good run through stage 6
in the Pierse Subaru.
In Group N Garry Jennings lost his lead in a big
way when he put his Lancer off the road on a 5 right in Gortnagane. A few
spectators and a helpful passing helicopter crew managed to get Garry’s
virtually undamaged Lancer back on to the road, but he lost a lot of time.
Also departed the fray, the reason we know not, is Seamus Leonard. His car
did not emerge from the end of stage 5 Molls Gap. Colm Murphy piled on the
pressure through stage 6 to move into the group N lead. Alan Ring had a good
run through stage 6 to come into 2nd in Group N. Alan took 47s off
his previous time through the test. James O’Sullivan is showing 3rd
in gpN at the moment. James in the 023 Tiles car reckons he made a poor tyre
choice. Having said all this about Group N – there is a car running way way
back, Terry McGonigle at No.89, and he has been setting some pretty stunning
GpN times. We know he passed 3 cars in Gortnagane for example, first time
through, and was showing well up in the top 20. We have to wait for a while to
get his more recent times. Roy White has at last started to speed up, but
then he dropped a few seconds when he stopped to make sure Garry Jennings was
OK. Aaron MacHale is nicely on the pace, but he was slowed slightly in 6 when
his Lancer developed a vibration.
In the 2 wheel drive category Phil Collins is now on 59.55 which would
put Phil and his co driver Dairmuid Falvey on to the back end of the
leaderboard for the international rally. Dessie Keenan is chasing hard after
Phil, as is Willie Power, but at the moment Collins is the class of the field.
Keenan made a real charge over stage 5 but spun his Escort up at Molls Gap.
Colin McRae was faster than Collins over Molls Gap by 11s, but dropped 5s
through Gortnagane, Colin reporting his Escort dropping on to 3 cylinders.
Looking back slightly, after stage 4 Guy Woodcock in his RS2000 Maxi had just
edged ahead of Dave Randles in his ex works Almera for the lead of class 7.
Ken O’Neill led class 6 from Brian O’Mahony. Brian was having trouble getting
traction in his Puma. Gordon Coleman led cl.3 and Mick Quinn cl.2.
On Sardinia Rally Loeb still leads from Solberg
with Rovanpera 3rd Martin 4th. In the Junior WRC Kris
Meeke & Chris Patterson still lead in their Citroen from Aava in his Suzuki
with Sordo 3rd in the second Citroen and Katajamaki 4th
in his Suzuki. More news later. BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON
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