It was always going to be a tall order for Alastair Fisher to hold on to his lead through this morning’s stages, but he got off on the wrong foot entirely when he slid wide on the very first corner of the opening Sunday stage. He was off the road again further into the stage and the side and rear of his Lancer is slightly damaged. Alastair said at stage finish that his main time loss was down to himself being untidy. Fastest through that 7.94 mile Fincarn Hill test was Tim McNulty on 7m38s. Gareth MacHale was 0.7 of a second down. McGarrity was a further 11s back and Alastair Fisher another 3s down on Derek. Tim said at stage finish. "All OK”. Gareth MacHale was again frustrated to report that the car had stopped twice. His engineers have changed the Hercules box in the car, the master switch and the wiring loom. What more do they have to do? Derek McGarrity was in a rush at stage finish and we know he has 2 harder compound tyres in the boot that he may want to change before stage 11. Aaron MacHale made a good tyre choice this morning and has moved up one place.
Richard Cathcart, 5th o/a and 2nd GpN discovered last night that his Impreza suspension was damaged. The only available spares were gravel type struts, that is what he is now using, the car is tail happy but he is battling on as best he can. Daragh O’Riordan was just a couple of seconds down on Alastair Fisher and Daragh said. “No heroics, middle of the road”. John McGlaughlin lost a few seconds, his Lancer still misfiring and the tracking has been knocked out which makes the car difficult on right hand bends. John won the Evo Challenge yesterday, but it is a clean sheet today and Neil McCance was 8s faster through that opening stage.
Marty McCormack continues to lead the Citroen Racing Trophy. Marty is having a great run in his Citroen C2R2 Max. Mark Donnelly who is 2nd Citroen was 17s down on that opening stage. Mark lost time last night when he spun and got the car jammed between two banks. Adrian McElhinney is 3rd in the Citroens. Andrew Bushe is in 21st place having dropped out of the top 10 in stage 9 when his Citroen collected a puncture. Andrew had a problem with the jack and also then spun the car. Tommy Doyle was up into the top 10 last night but his Clio ran wide on a 2nd gear left hand corner and the front wheel caught a rock stopping the car. Tommy also reported that some not very nice person threw a bottle at his car in the stage and broke one of the lights. That wasn’t too bad, but it could have been a lot worse. Just outside the above top 10 – Mark Donnelly is 11th: Brendan Cumiskey 12th: Geoff McMahon 13th: Sam Moffett, despite a buckled wheel this morning, 14th: Alan Ring 15th.
In the National Rally Kenny McKinstry has a massive 5m lead. His daughter Emma is 2nd in her similar Impreza WRC and John Waring is 3rd in his Mk2 Escort.
More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON & MICHAEL www.rallynews.net
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