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RALLY NEWS NO.2 Lurgan Park/Saturday/1pm UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 2 If anything conditions were even slippier through stage 2 and most drivers were a second or two slower. Not so Mark Higgins who powered his Impreza through slightly faster than his first run to open up a 4s gap to Kevin Lynch. Four seconds may not sound a lot but in Lurgan Park terms it is. Higgins is running Pirelli tyres and he’s finding some grip, whereas Kevin Lynch’s Focus was spinning wheels everywhere through the stage. Three times winner Kevin is going to have to pull something special out of the bag to claw himself back into contention over the next few stages. Kenny McKinstry is just half a second behind Lynch, Kenny’s co driver Noel Orr saying: “I couldn’t believe it at stage finish when we were slightly slower than our first run. It’s a long time since I’ve seen Kenny driving as aggressively in here”. Charlie Donnelly on 4th admitted to making another small mistake which cost a vital second or two. Richard Hogg in 5th is starting to wonder if there is a clutch slip problem in his Skoda or is just that it is so slippy he mistakenly thought that the cutch was slipping. Nigel Worswick did well to hold on to 6th place o/a in his Escort WRC. Denis Biggerstaff in 7th admitted that he “sort of stalled!”. Michael Curran in 8th had a really good run to maintain his lead in the Group N category, just ahead of Garry Jennings. Garry said “I’m just not in it today”. Niall McShea is settling in to his Group N Lancer, and although he was a couple of seconds off the pace on his first run was fastest group N through the 2nd stage. John McGlaughlin was right up with the GpN times on the 1st stage but slipped slightly on the 2nd when he forgot to switch on the differentials on his Lancer. Derek McGeehan rounds off the top 10, Derek reporting “I just couldn’t stop the Corolla, it is so greasy, we had a half spin”. James Gillen is just outside the leaderboard, James driving the ex Eddie Garry Impreza WRC for the first time here in the Park. John McKeown, with his wife Amanda co-driving, is 12th and Neale Dougan is down in 13th place having made a bit of a mess of his 2nd run when he stalled at the hairpin. Further stories include: Maurice Gass is having some gearbox troubles with his Impreza. Rodney White put his Sunbeam off the road, through the trees, didn’t hit anything solid but lost a little time. Kieran O’Neill, who has Damien Quinn of “Give My Head Peace” fame co-driving, had a spin on that stage and lost a few seconds. Sonya Mac finished the stage with an “no entry” sign stuck to the front of her Ka, evidence of an overshoot up an escape road. Alan Carmichael is out in his new Lancer, caught Sonya in the stage, but wasn’t a bit worried and said “I’m just out for a bit of fun in my new car, its really a shake down for the Ulster Rally”. Kris Meeke’s Escort conked out at the finish of the stage and is now running on 3 cylinders, so its not looking good of young Kris. Wesley Patterson is fastest of the Mk2 Escorts by a long way and is 18th o/a and leading Class 2 just ahead of Darren Gass. Kyle Orr is also running in class 2 in the Sligo Pallets Saxo, Kyle in 30th o/a and has Siobhan McGarry of UTV co-driving and by coincidence they are just ahead of William Carey/Pamela Ballantine in their Escort Mk2. |
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