National Rally – 1st Daniel McKenna 30.22.8: 2nd Gary McPhillips 31.01.9: 3rd Rodney Wilton 31.03.6: 4th David Bogie 31.06.2 5th Manus Kelly 31.21.9 6th Wesley Patterson 31.25.4 7th Phil Collins 31.21.8
“Showboating” was the name of the game for rally leader Gareth MacHale as he fairly flung his Focus WRC through the streets of Bancrana, stage 5 of this Topaz Donegal Int Rally. Gareth and his co-driver Brian Murphy have such a commanding lead – almost a minute over Craig Breen in his Fiesta Super 2000 – that he could afford to indulge himself for this short spectator stage. And what a venue this has turned out to be for the spectator stage – thousands of onlookers, wall to wall blue sky, sunshine rippling off the waters of Lough Swilly. Tim McNulty in his Subaru was fastest through the stage, celebrating a new gearbox having been fitted at Carndonagh service. However Tim knows he is up against it now in terms of winning this rally. But then sometimes it’s a case of ‘every second counts! He did improve from 5th to 4th Tim’s time was 54.6 secs, PJ McDermott set a time of 57.3, and 3rd fastest Gareth MacHale recorded 58.3. In truth though, there were only seconds splitting the top drivers. One driver to lose a few places was Seamus Leonard – he dropped from 3rd to 5th when his Subaru conked out in the stage. Just outside the leaderboard is Robert Barrable/Damien Connolly in their Citroen C2R2Max, to lead the Citroen Racing Trophy. Second in the Citroens is Shane Buckley with Mark Donnelly third and Mark Sheahan fourth. Tommy Doyle in his Clio is having a great run in 12th o/all and leading class 4. Alan Carmichael is being shown as second in class 4 and young Toni Kelly is having a good run in here Civic to hold third in class.
In the National section of the rally Wesley Patterson and Daniel McKenna and Rodney Wilton were equal fastest through this spectator stage, all on 59 seconds.
More News in the Morning…. Brian and Michael Patterson.
