Following a cautious start, which left him in an unaccustomed seventh place on the opening stage at Glenboy, near Manorhamilton on Friday morning, French ace Sebastien Loeb showed just why he has been World Rally champion for the last five years by blitzing his opposition for the rest of the day to bring his Citroen Total C4 into the overnight halt in Sligo with a lead of 44 seconds in Rally Ireland, the opening round of this year’s World series.

Loeb decided not to take any chances in the dreadful weather conditions at the start, with the early morning darkness making it difficult to see the large areas of standing water caused by torrential rain, and it was Finn Jari-Matti Latvala who took the early lead in his BP Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team Focus WRC, covering the 14 miles almost 18 seconds quicker than Estonian Urmo Aava, making his Irish debut for the Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team.

Fermanagh driver Niall McShea, a former Production World champion, took a shock third position overall in his Group N Proton Satria, but unfortunately he was forced to retire shortly afterwards with an electronic problem. Latvala’s initial lead didn’t last for long, as he spun on the second stage, Cavan, hitting a bank and damaging his car’s suspension, losing two minutes as he limped to the end, but his rally was over.

This left Aava in top place as the cars returned to Sligo for the first service halt, 6.7 seconds ahead of Loeb. Mikko Hirvonen, leader of the BP Ford team, was third, another half minute down, ahead of Citroen’s Dani Sordo and Henning Solberg in the second Stobart car. On the second loop of the same three stages, Loeb took command to extend his run of best times to five in a row, with his team mate coming through to second place ahead of Hirvonen.

Solberg held a distant fourth place, ahead of three more Citroens in the hands of Conrad Rautenbach of Zimbabwe, Junior World champion Sebastien Ogier and Australian Chris Atkinson. Aava couldn’t maintain his early pace and dropped down the order, finally sliding off the road on the second run through Aughnasheelan and ending the day in eighteenth position.

Best of the Irish crews were Gareth MacHale/Brian Murphy in their Focus and the Subaru Impreza of Tarmac champions Eamonn Boland/Damien Morrissey, in ninth and tenth places. MacHale had a slight gearbox problem on the last two stages of the day while Boland reported a trouble-free run. The other two MacHale family members, elder son Aaron and veteran Austin, both lost time with punctures on their Focuses leaving Aaron in twelfth place with his father seventeenth on his first rally for more than a year.

The Kerry/Cork pairing of Alan Ring and Adrian Deasy led the Group N class in their Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 by half a minute from the Gulf World Rally Team Ireland car of Shaun Gallagher and Paul Kiely.

With the constant heavy rain making life miserable for the large crowds of spectators, his rivals must have briefly thought that there was a chink in Sebastien Loeb’s apparent invincibility as he slid wide towards the end of the second run through the Sloughan Glen stage near Drumquin on Saturday afternoon.

For most of the 17 mile stage, the five times World champion’s Citroen Total C4 was the pace setter, as on every other stage during the day. However, nearing the finish, he went into the grass on one corner and felt a vibration in the car, slackening right off to end the stage 14 seconds down on the BP Ford Focus of World title rival Mikko Hirvonen.

Second placed Dani Sordo, Jari-Matti Latvala’s Focus and Chris Atkinson’s Citroen also beat Loeb’s time, but there was no lasting damage to the leader’s car, leaving him with a 69 second margin as they head into the final day’s five stages in Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal. As the chances of Sordo being allowed to beat his team leader are nil, the Frenchman’s effective lead is two and a half minutes over Hirvonen, who in turn has more than three minutes in hand on Norwegian Henning Solberg’s Stobart Focus.

Australian Chris Atkinson was setting regular top three times as he became more used to his Citroen Junior Team C4 and was poised to go ahead of Solberg, having reduced the gap to less than five seconds during the day. Atkinson’s plan is to impress the team management enough to obtain more drives during the year and he looks well on the way to achieving that. Conrad Rautenbach was one of the day’s main casualties, crashing his Citroen out of fifth place on the day’s opening stage and delaying Junior World champion Sebastien Ogier, his teammate, costing the young Frenchman well over a minute.

Top Irish driver Gareth MacHale’s Focus was still having gearbox problems which slowed him on the morning loop, and his crew fitted a new box at service in Sligo. However, at the end of the day, a blown turbocharger forced him to limp through the last stage at Tempo, costing three minutes and dropping him from eighth place to twelfth. This left Tarmac champion Eamonn Boland in his Subaru Impreza as top local man in ninth position.

There was a more serious problem for MacHale as his car then stopped with major engine trouble near Manorhamilton on the long road section back to Sligo, and he is out of the rally although still classified in the overnight results. Aaron MacHale in another of the family’s Focuses was exactly one minute behind Boland and intends trying to close that gap on the remaining five stages, but he will have his work cut out to do so.

The battle for the Group N Production class was getting ever closer, with Letterkenny driver Shaun Gallagher in the Gulf World Rally Team Ireland Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 going ahead of Alan Ring’s Munster Joinery car on the afternoon loop. Third placed Gary Jennings, on home ground, had a tremendous drive on Saturday, beating his two rivals by large amounts on five of the six stages. However, he somehow ran out of petrol on the Ballinamallard stage, losing well over three minutes while fuel was siphoned from a spectator’s car to get him going again.

To the surprise of no-one, Sebastien Loeb and Daniel Elena got their bid for a record sixth World Rally Championship in a row off to the best possible start when their Citroen Total C4 ran out the winner of Rally Ireland, returning to the Sligo headquarters with a comfortable one minute, 28 seconds to spare over teammates Dani Sordo/Marc Marti in a repeat of the Citroen 1-2 result in the last Irish round of the World Championship in November 2007.

Sunday’s five stages in Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal were bathed in bright sunshine in a complete contrast to the torrential rain of the first two days, and Loeb could afford to cruise though them, setting just a single best time on the shortened version of Arigna. Last year’s championship runner up, Mikko Hirvonen in the BP Ford Focus, was quickest on the other four, but he was too far behind to have any realistic hope of improving on the third place which he held since Friday, lying 40 seconds behind Sordo at the end.

Australian Chris Atkinson, the former works Subaru driver, climbed to fourth place on Sunday’s opening stage as he aimed to convince the Citroen management that he deserves a place in their Junior team for the rest of the year. However, he was still being pressured by the Stobart Focus of Henning Solberg, whom he had hunted down for two days, and on the Donegal Bay stage, the second last of the rally, Atkinson went off the road on the first corner, losing more than a minute and dropping back to fifth behind his Norwegian rival.

Last year’s Junior World Rally champion, Sebastien Ogier, who last weekend won the Monte Carlo Rally, took sixth place in another Citroen, ahead of Matthew Wilson who won the first Rally Ireland in 2005.

Tarmac champions Eamonn Boland and Damien Morrissey held their position as highest placed home crew, bringing their Subaru Impreza home ninth, while Aaron MacHale and Killian Duffy had to settle for eleventh in their Focus, pulling back just 14 seconds on Boland on the day.

Shaun Gallagher from Letterkenny in the Gulf World Rally Team Ireland Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 ran out the clear winner of the Group N Production class. He had gone ahead of long time leader Alan Ring’s Munster Joinery car late on Saturday and was fourteen seconds in front as they headed for the last two stages. However, the Kerryman’s luck was out and gear linkage problems forced him to retire on the road section before the Donegal stages, giving Gallagher a three minute win over Gary Jennings.

There were class victories for Carlow pair Ken Treacy and Martin Comerford in their VW Polo and for Letterkenny woman Toni Kelly, co-driven by Tony McDaid in a Honda Civic. Billy Coleman Award winner Ross Forde’s hopes of matching this were dashed when his Suzuki Swift was forced to retire after the Arigna stage with diff failure.

Text:-MotorsportIreland.com 

RALLY IRELAND AT SLIGO (ROUND 1 OF FIA WORLD RALLY
CHAMPIONSHIP):
1 Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena (Citroen C4 WRC) 2h 48m 25.7s,
2 Dani Sordo/Marc Marti (Citroen C4 WRC) 2h 49m 53.6s,
3 Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen (Ford Focus WRC) 2h 50m 33.5s,
4 Henning Solberg/Cato Menkerud (Ford Focus WRC) 2h 54m 58.1s,
5 Chris Atkinson/Stephane Prevot (Citroen C4 WRC) 2h 56m 17.6s,
6 Sebastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Citroen C4 WRC) 2h 59m 09.7s,
7 Matthew Wilson/Scott Martin (Ford Focus WRC) 2h 59m 49.5s,
8 Khalid al Qassimi/Michael Orr (Ford Focus WRC) 3h 02m 33.6s,
9 Eamonn Boland/Damien Morrissey (Subaru Impreza WRC) 3h 03m 49.1s,
10 Urmo Aava/Kuldar Sikk (Ford Focus WRC) 3h 04m 01.1s,
11 Aaron MacHale/Killian Duffy (Ford Focus WRC) 3h 04m 35.4s,
12 Tim McNulty/Eugene O’Donnell (Subaru Impreza WRC) 3h 09m 23.6s.

Group N Production class:
1 Shaun Gallagher/Paul Kiely (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9) 3h 09m 41.9s,
2 Gary Jennings/Rory Kennedy (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9) 3h 12m 37.8s,
3 Paul Elliott/Brian Doherty (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9) 3h 38m 33s.

Junior WRC class:
1 Aaron Burkart/Michael Kolbach (Suzuki Swift S1600) 3h 16m 41.5s,
2 Martin Prokop/Jan Tomanek (Citroen C2 S1600) 3h 17m 28.8s,
3 Simone Bertolotti/Luca Celestini (Suzuki Swift S1600) 3h 25m 41.6s.