Rally News No.5 Sunday Heritage Hotel
Portlaoise Finish 5.30pm
Unofficial Leaderboard After Stage Eight
1st
(5) Ray Breen/Andrew Purcell (Focus WRC) 1.08.50
2nd
(1) Niall Maguire/Edna Sherry (Impreza WRC) 1.09.28
3rd
(166) Liam McCarthy/Kieran Murphy (Impreza WRC) 1.09.52
4th
(4) Kevin Barrett/Barry Goodman (Impreza WRC) 1.10.24
5th
(3) Noel Redmond/Diarmuid Falvey (Impreza WRC) 1.11.36
6th
(11) Alan Ring/Sean Moriarity (Impreza N) 1.11.46
7th
(23) Adrian Quinn/Alan Moran (Lancer N) 1.12.20
8th
(92) Kevin O’Donoghue/Joe O’Leary (Lancer N) 1.12.34
9th
(13) Tadhg Linehan/John Kearney (Impreza N) 1.12.40
10th
(42) Peter McCullough/Hugh McKenna (Lancer N) 1.13.41
11th
(60) Joe Curran/Martin McGarrity (Impreza N) 1.13.57
It
has been an almost perfect performance today from Ray Breen and co
driver Andrew Purcell who have guided their Ford Focus WRC to a 38
second victory. This is Ray Breen’s first ever major victory and
his performance was such that he set seven out of eight fastest
times and only missed out on a clean sweep by one second on SS7.
Ray was understandably delighted at the finish of the final stage “I
am very very pleased, I nearly got the clean sweep on the stage
times but the first big win makes up for that and the Focus was
perfect today”. Niall Maguire showed his usual class on his run to
a fine second, Niall using the event as a warm up as he prepares to
defend his Dunlop national championship title and gave a big thumbs
up to today’s event. Liam McCarthy lost a few seconds this morning
and also was learning Patterson Pacenotes but put in an extremely
strong drive to third and was pleased with his result saying “we had
a good run today, a real good warm up for West Cork”.
Alan
Ring led GpN from the start today and never really looked under
pressure in the Munster Joinery Impreza, he did have a bit of a race
with Adrian Quinn but Alan was as cool as a cucumber at the finish
and said “job done, good run, we had 21 seconds going into the final
stage so I am happy with that result”. It was heartbreak for Peter
Clifford who after a troublesome day ended when he retired on the start line of
the final stage while Jack Sleator has had road penalties applied and the Midland East Championship
sponsor drops out of the top ten down to 13th.
It
looks like Seamus Doyle will take the 2wd battle despite a disputed
30 second timing error on stage seven, by our calculations he just
pips Aidan Walsh by five seconds at the finish. Finally for now a
very big well done to COC Bill Ryan and Birr and District AC for a
fantastic event that ran like clockwork over some super stages.
Michael Patterson & Zoe Todd
