Through the fast Caherduggan stage both Gareth MacHale and Eugene Donnelly beat the bogey time with Gareth the faster of the two by almost 5s. Behind these this flying pair at the front Denis Cronin was 3rd fastest while in the National section Phil Collins set a scorcher of a time just a fraction of a second slower than Cronin’s. When Gareth MacHale reached stage finish he reported all well and said. “Its fast in there. I knew I was going to beat the bogey but you have to go hard to keep your concentration”. Eugene Donnelly said. “We had a comfortable run, no point in going mad. I had a few big drifts through the square corners to keep my concentration”. Eugene went on to say that the problem with the water injection pump has been sorted and his Skoda was on full song. Denis Cronin commented that he felt he really rusty early on but it is coming together nicely now.
Alastair Fisher had a slight worry at stage finish in that his Lancer won’t stay in its tarmac differential setting for some reason. Owen Murphy was a lot closer to Alastair’s stage time on that one, Owen getting into the way of his new car and sorting out some of the teething troubles. Daragh O’Riordan went on to a harder compound tyre at service and set a really good time through 4. Robert Barrable is now 38s ahead of Mark Donnelly in the race for Fiesta honours. Mark reckons he’s getting less than 80 per cent throttle. John Hickey said its going from bad to worse, his Ford/Subaru incurred a puncture in stage 4. Mark Nangle told us he has woken up at last and his times are improving.
John Buttimer is shown as running in class 4 in his Subaru but he told us he is actually running in class 8 and is chasing hard over Thormond Crystal Southern 4 C/ship points. Jeremy Taylor/Jody Patterson are now up to 12th o/a in the International section, their Taylor Patterson/RallyNews.net Lancer now into 6th in Group N. John Quill is suffering from a very bad cold but he is still into the top 20 and 4th in class in his little Citroen C2R2 with Alan Hartigan co-driving. Washington James changed the clutch on his Darrian at service and went well through stage 4.
Phil Collins was an amazing 31s faster on the 2nd run through Caherduggan and said. “Its amazing what confidence can do”. Joe McGonigle is listed in the programme as driving a Citroen C2R2 but he is in fact driving his Civic and just has to finish the rally to win his class in the Tarmac C/ship. Brian & Carol O’Keefe had problems through stage 3 when their Impreza suffered a damaged turbo or manifold pipe.
More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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