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| Circuit of Kerry |
| RALLY NEWS No.1 - Pre Start - Sunday @ 09:22:08 |
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RALLY NEWS NO.1 Fels Point Hotel/Tralee/Saturday evening
This time last year Patrick Elliott and Niall Maguire in their respective Subarus tied on total time for the rally, with Patrick being awarded victory on a tie break. He then went on to win the National Championship. This year he has started the season very much on the victory path, and indeed is trying for a double hat-trick of wins. He has won this Circuit of Kerry Rally for the last 2 years and has won the first 2 rounds of this year’s championship, Nenagh and Mayo. That’s the intriguing picture at the top of the entry, with Niall Maguire, Kevin Barrett and young Darren Gass all in Subarus, the three men most likely to deprive Cavan man Patrick of all the honours. Patrick’s Subaru has had the engine rebuilt by Prodrive since his win on the Mayo Rally and following a test run on Friday afternoon he reckons that it will still take a mile or two to fully settle in. Following his reconnaissance of the stages Patrick commented. “It is a good mixture of roads here it won’t particularly favour any one driver or car”. Niall Maguire and Kevin Barrett report all routine with their Imprezas. For Darren Gass it’s a case of being in at the deep end a little. He is driving Kenny McKinstry’s Impreza WRC S11, a good car, but he has done no testing and his familiarisation run will be on the way out to the opening stage.
Starting at No.5 is Donie O’Sullivan in the new Proton Super 2000, which runs in the GpN category. Apparently the new car is ‘flying’, and there has been so much testing in the Proton in the days before the rally that the new car could be half worn out already! Garry Jennings, running at 6 in his black Evo, heads the ‘conventional’ GpN contingent. Behind Garry is a very strong GpN line-up, including GpN National Champion Alan Ring, Tarmac GpN Champion Kevin Kelleher, local man Thomas Fitzmaurice, Anthony O’Halloran and Sean Flanagan. All except Flanagan are in Mitsubishis, Flanagan is in a Subaru. Sandwiched in there is Brian O’Mahony in his Clio, British Junior Rally Champion Brian fairly confident that the problem with the engine which prevented him doing West Cork, is sorted, a thrust washer had collapsed allowing the crank shaft to move. Behind Sean Flanagan is the first of the Mk2 Escorts, and again there is a strong line-up, with Mike Quinn being the top Escort seed at 14, with Ed Synan at 15, Des Moore at 17 and Kevin O’Donoghue at 19.
That’s just a flavour of the sort of competition on the rally, and with the interesting route laid out by Clerk of the Course Senan Ragget it should be a great day’s sport. Around 110 cars should start the main rally, with 13 Juniors joining in at stage 5. Several of the reserves have been slotted in to the main field, most prominent of them being Jack Maguire in his Escort Cosworth running with the number 142 but will probably start in the top 20. Just some of the non-starters include: John O’Donnell (No.16): Eamonn Daly (20): Fergus O’Meara (21): Anthony Hand (24): Andrew Bushe (28): Arthur Kierans is now co-driving for Des Moore (17): Finally for now our congratulations to Keith Cronin and his co driver Greg Shinnors on their brilliant win on the opening round of the British Rally Championship, the Bulldog Rally. They had a non stop battle all day with former British Champion Mark Higgins and to finally beat Mark on the last stage through the daunting Welsh forests was a superb achievement.
More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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