RALLY NEWS NO.1                                                    Eyre Square/Friday evening

Norwegian teenage rally star Andreas Mikkelsen came into the Clayton Hotel this morning to sign on for his recce and was smiling delightedly at the snow cascading down outside. The conditions made him feel very much at home. The Irish drivers on the other hand rolled their eyes at the thought of driving their 300 horse power machines over the snowy back roads through the Galway countryside. Hopefully the weather won’t play too big a part on this Safety Direct Galway International Rally, the opening round of this season’s Global Group Tarmac Championship.

Gareth MacHale in his Focus WRC will head the cars away for the 14 special stages, 8 on Saturday and 6 on Sunday. Despite a few withdrawals from the original advertised list (Patrick Elliott and Peadar Hurson spring to mind), there should be 151 cars in the main field. In addition there’s a Historic section joining in on Saturday at lunch time, and then on Sunday there is a Junior category led off by John McQuaid, plus a 9 strong Fiesta Sporting Trophy brigade, led by reigning champion Alastair Fisher. A new innovation this year is the ‘Evo Challenge. A competition for the GpN Mitsubishi Lancer drivers who register and run on Pirelli control tyres and use Sunoco fuel.

As he waited for the ceremonial start, Gareth MacHale and his co-driver Allan Harryman were in fine form. Alan is fresh from a top 10 finish on the Arctic Rally. Gareth reported that his Focus WRC, supported by Tom Hogan Motors and several more concerns,  has had a good check over since his last outing, when he finished best Irish driver on the WRC Rally Ireland. Behind Gareth will be four times Tarmac Champion Eugene Donnelly, this time driving the Jack Sleator Subaru. Eugene’s car runs a different suspension set-up from the other top Subarus, and although this will be his first time to run the car in anger, Eugene has had a test with it and feels confident he can give the rally a good go. Mark Higgins is at 3 and he drives a McGarrity Subaru. Mark hasn’t had a real chance to test, but ‘professional’ that he is, the former British Champion shouldn’t be long settling into the groove.

Then at 4 it is that brilliant young Norwegian Mikkelsen in his Focus WRC, the ‘05 version. He has a ’06 one, but it is on its way to Karlstad for next weekend’s Swedish Rally. Mikkelsen has shown great flashes of speed in Ireland, and has built up a feel for the roads. Some of these days he must surely win an Irish Tarmac Championship round. If this does turn out to be a snowy Galway, who knows, this could be the one where Andreas scores ‘the big one’.

At 5 it is Tim McNulty in his Pierse backed Subaru, Tim renowned as a hard charger and back on form following a fairly miserable rally year through the early part of ’07. Eamonn Boland rounds off the top six in his Impreza, and then its National Champion Aaron MacHale at 7, former multiple Tarmac Champion Derek McGarrity at 9 in a ‘Prodrive’ Impreza WRC, and former National Champion Stephen Murphy at 10 in a new Impreza WRC. There are many really good drivers in WRC machinery outside the top ten. PJ McDermott, Kevin Barrett, Niall Maguire, Seamus Leonard to name just a few, who could well share the success limelight this weekend, in what has all the appearances of being a fascinating rally. It is a possibility also that the first few drivers on the road could clear some of the anticipated snow for those behind, which could produce a different leaderboard early on. Of course, they could also polish the ice!

Current GpN Champion Colm Murphy is the highest seeded ‘production’ driver. He’s at No16, and has switched from his Subaru to James Foley’s Lancer for this one. Colm has also registered for the Evo Challenge, and could be the benchmark. Garry Jennings is sticking with his own GpN Lancer, and has Damien Connolly co-driving. As the minutes tick away to the start, Garry is undecided whether to register for the Evos or not! There are quite a few good GpN drivers at the top end of the leaderboard, such as Kevin Kelleher, John McGlaughlin, Owen Murphy and Jonny Greer. Paul Dempsey of Galway Helicopters is another in GpN in his Impreza and he is on home ground so could go well. A very interesting entry is Martin Rowe at 21. He’s a former British Rally Champion, as well as the 2003 World Production Champion. Martin drives Willie Fannin’s GpN Impreza, run by John O’Leary Motorsport, and his progress over the weekend will be closely watched.  Roy White is driving one of the new breed of rally cars an MG S2000. Gwyndaf Evans helped Roy set the car up earlier this week, and as the S2000 runs in the GpN category, there will be a lot of interest there as well. News of further non-starters include Gabriel Martin (No22) and Damien Tourish (No30) not being able to do the rally. Damien has in fact been badly hurt in a building site accident and we wish him a speedy and full recovery. More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net

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