Modifieds
1st Daniel McKenna 37.59.8, 2nd David Bogie 38.30.6, 3rd Gary McPhillips 38.35.2, 4th Rodney Wilton 38.56.9, 5th Manus Kelly 38.56.2, 6th Wesley Patterson 38.56.7, 7th Phil Collins 39.08.0
Main stories from the opening stage of this day 2 on the Topaz Donegal Rally are that Tim McNulty was fastest International, David Bogie was fastest National in his Metro 6R4, Keith Cronin has crashed out of the International and John O’Donnell has crashed his Escort out of the Nationals. Fine sunny conditions were the order of the day and at the end of the first stage, Gareth MacHale commented, “A steady run”. Craig Breen was a bit flustered at the stage finish having lost 15s to the leaders and he described his Fiesta as being, “All over the place”. The young Waterford driver was at a loss as to why his tyres were not performing well.
McNulty was happy with his run, unlike Seamus Leonard whose Subaru continued to misfire for the first couple of miles of the stage, and once it cleared, Seamus was happy with his performance (The McKinstry mechanics changed Seamus’ Impreza gearbox in record time this morning but there weren’t enough minutes left to change the spark plugs and coil packs). Darragh O’Riordan was on the phone to his Prodrive engineer at the end of the Carnhill test, his Impreza had gone into safe mode toward the end of the stage.
Damien Tourish has lost 3rd gear in his Lancer and thinks he will have to drive around with the problem for some time as there is insufficient time to change the gearbox at the next service. Alastair Fisher reported great grip from his Pirelli tyres but there is no way Alastair, the current Citroen Tarmac Championship leader, can match the World Rally Cars in these dry, fast conditions.
Daniel McKenna dropped a few seconds when he stopped at the Keith Cronin accident and he described it as, “Keith is off on the outside of a square right. No damage but he is stuck and we did not see the OK board”. Adrian Hetherington was another driver who stopped in the stage but this time for John O’Donnell who is OK while Adrian said he also had to get round a spun Paul Barrett.
More news later from Brian and Michael Patterson plus Ciara (Liz Jnr for the weekend)
