On stage 4 Declan Boyle moved to the front when Sam Moffett`s Fiesta incurred a front wheel puncture. An extra twist to the situation was that Boyle bat the `bogey` time of the stage by 6s, so that his lead should have been 11s not 5s. Interestingly, the first couple of times coming from stage 5 show Moffett fastest to reduce Boyle`s lead to 3s. Moffett`s stage 4 puncture happened within a kilometre of the finish and the tyre was still on the rim when he arrived at the stage stop line with no damage done. Two other drivers, Garry Jennings and Darren Gass, beat the bogey time for stage 4, although not by as much as Boyle. We mentioned on the last RallyNews that Darren Gass was unhappy about his Subaru gear change. It transpires that Darren will have to use a different driving technique on this Impreza WRC 12B as the mechanism will not work if there is any throttle being applied. It either has to be neutral throttle or on the brakes before it will down shift. Derek McGarrity has the problem on his Subaru sorted. It turned out to be nothing more than a brake guard getting tangled inside a rear wheel. It is a matter now of Derek re-building his confidence again.
In the National Rally the big news from stage 4 was that Declan Gallagher`s Toyota Starlet is parked in the stage and for the moment out of the rally. Gary McPhillips was stunningly fast through the stage 4s up on Daniel McKenna and Daniel had no problems. Michael Dunlop was down in 22nd position and he had a good run in stage 4 and is now up to 16th overall. Frank Kelly is still trying to sort the handling of his Escort and he went very hard through stage 4 to jump 4 places on the leaderboard up to 6th o/a. Manus Kelly in 3rd remarked at stage finish. `I can go no faster`. Indeed the speed of the Escorts is remarkable. In the Gp N category on the International Pat Kirk leads Josh Moffett by 13s. with Eugene Meegan 3rd and Stephen McCann 4th and having a good run so far.
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