2007 Ulster Rally
Rally News No.1 Rally News No.2

RALLY NEWS NO.2 End of stage 1/Forenst Beragh/Friday 6pm
UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 1 – TODD’S LEAP
1st (3) Kris Meeke/Paul Nagle (Impreza WRC) 7.47.1
2nd (1) Eugene Donnelly/Paul Kiely (Impreza WRC) 7.52.8
3rd (8) Guy Wilks/Phil Pugh (Lancer N) 8.03.5
4th (4) Andrew Nesbitt/James O'Brien (Impreza WRC) 8.06.6
5th (10) Gwyndaf Evans/Huw Lewis (Lancer N) 8.06.9
6th (9) Mark Higgins/Rory Kennedy (Impreza N) 8.10.5
7th (6) Tim McNulty/Eugene O'Donnell (Impreza WRC) 8.13.1
8th (17) Phillip & Simon Morrow (Lancer N) 8.16.4
9th (5) Eamonn Boland/Francis Regan (Impreza WRC) 8.19.1
10th (14) Colm Murphy/Ger Loughrey (Impreza N) 8.24.0

Kris Meeke admitted that he took a gamble on tyres starting this Ulster Rally and it certainly looks to be paying off for the young Bush crossroads man. Perhaps it is Kris making it work. Over the wet slippy roads of the opening stage, Todd’s Leap, Kris was fastest by 5s from Eugene Donnelly with Guy Wilks an incredible 3rd fastest in his Group N Lancer. We have news that Guy’s Mitsubishi had some throttle problem on stage 2, Ivy Hill, which cost around 30s. More news on that later. Meeke said of his run over Todd’s Leap “That was incredible, it was great to learn how to drive in the wet on slick tyres. I think the next stage may be drier which will be good for me”. Eugene Donnelly brought his Reid Motorsport Subaru smoothly into the finish of that very tough first stage and said. “No heroics we were nice and settled, made no blunders, going about eight tenths. It was very slippy we were on slick tyres and I think they were right”.

Andrew Nesbitt was 3rd on the road and he was hampered by a misted up screen and as he drove down the road he was searching for the right switches to correct the problem. Eamonn Boland was down a few seconds on the top cars, Eamonn covered in sweat as he battled his Subaru over the slippy roads on dry weather tyres. Tim McNulty also admitted to picking too hard a compound tyre and said. “It was pretty dry in Armagh, I wasn’t expecting it this wet here”.

Guy Wilks, fastest on the Tesco 99 contenders on that first stage, said “Following 2 events on the world rally championship it is tricky to tell how fast we are going in the group N car”.

More news later. BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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