The difficult weather conditions have caused a few upsets amongst the leaders. Daragh O’Riordan has put his Subaru off the road in stage 3. Barry Meade crashed his Escort and Mark Sheahan crashed his Citroen C2R2 Max in stage 2. Early leader Aaron MacHale has dropped back because of a throttle problem on his Focus. Tim McNulty took the lead in stage 2. However, Tim’s Subaru has been in the wars as well. The front left corner of the Impreza has a lot of superficial damage caused when Tim skidded on a square right corner in the Ballydaly stage. Tim said. “We couldn’t see at all at times there was so much water coming down and we were on the wrong compound tyre”. Gareth MacHale was only 5th after the opening stage and said here at service. “We drove slowly through the first couple of stages, the wipers weren’t clearing the water. We softened the suspension as well after stage 2 and that gave a better feeling with the car”.
Alastair Fisher moved into 3rd overall after the first few stages and the lead of group N. Alastair said. “It was very treacherous on the first one”. Craig Breen was fastest through stage 3A and he said. “That was our only clean run. We had no intercom earlier and the screen was misted up as well”. Darren Gass damaged the front of his Subaru at a square right in stage 3. Apparently he thumped the back of the car and that sucked the front in. As well as that, Darren and co driver Sean Mullally were peering through a 3 inch gap in the misted up screen. Colm Murphy 3rd in GpN and he said he is having great fun running slick dry weather tyres on the streaming wet roads and at one point he had his Impreza in the bales at a chicane. Washington James in the Darrian said his wipers would not clear the water at all but he is still 2nd in the National category behind Ed O’Callaghan. Barry Meade put his Escort off the road on a downhill square left with mud.
Latest news on the Mark Sheahan accident is that Mark is OK and co driver Anthony O’Conaill has been taken to Cork hospital for some attention to his shoulder and back. Hopefully the injuries are not too severe. Anthony’s brother Mossie has just phoned to say that the injury is a suspected broken collarbone or broken rib. Tommy Doyle is on the edge of the top 10 and leads cl.4 despite his Clio still having some power steering problems and Tommy is having to hand brake the Clio through tight junctions. In the race for best Citroen C2R2 Max honours there are only seconds between Robert Barrable & Marty McCormack with Barrable having the slight edge. Sebastian Ling stopped to check that Barry Meade was OK and lost 3m in the process which he will hopefully get compensated for before the day is out. Aaron MacHale dropped almost 8m with his throttle body problem and the mechanics are fitting a new unit to the Focus here at service. Owen Murphy was also delayed behind the Meade incident.
More news later: BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net
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