Killarney, Rally of the Lakes 2012

Last weekend Rachel and I went down to spectate at the Killarney international rally. Killarney is one of my favourite rally weekends of the year as unlike the Circuit and the Ulster rallies we don't have jobs to do, and unlike Donegal the socialising is centred around eating rather than drinking.

We were joined this year by the usual crew of Richard and Karen Swanston, Phil and Ali Ford-Hutchinson, and for his first time at this rally James Scott. Luckily there was only the 7 of us because that allowed us all to fit into Richard's Disco and we would only need to take one car out to the stages. Using the Disco has the added advantage that Richard likes to try and make getting to the stages as much of an adventure as he can so if there is a white road on the map then that is the road we will be taking. With that in mind on Saturday we found ourselves heading towards a junction on stage 5 that only met the Ballaghbeama stage with a dotted line! As expected we soon ran out of road and had to walk the last 500m but it was a spectacular spot to watch the rally.

On Sunday we took what was supposed to be the safe option and went to a more usual spectator junction. However it didn't go as expected and we got the big Disco stuck just off the road. All her trick diff's and off road tyres couldn't pull her out so we had the shame of being pulled out by an Isuzu Trooper.

When we came back to the car after the stage we had been blocked in by 5 late comers so we were stuck there for an hour, which messed up out plans to get to some of the other stages. We then had loads of time to get down to see the Cods Head stage so we look the white road over the mountain past the old copper mine. It is a pretty spectacular road, which I have no photos off.

All in all it was a great weekends craic with the gang. My favourite car had to be Roy Whites Ford engined MG S2000. It sounds amazing and with the wide arches looks like a proper rally car. I didn't get a photo of it though so I'm a bit rubbish really. Roy was very quick but it looked to me like the car wasn't handling very well. On Ardgroom he had loads of understeer and then an the straight on Cods Head the car seemed to be bucking about all over the place, a complete animal. When he gets her sorted it will be an amazingly quick rally car.

http://www.rallyofthelakes.com/


On Friday we left Magheralin at 3:30pm and arrived in Kenmare at about 11pm having gone via Cork and stopped in Portlaoise for dinner. Driving time was 5h 45 and was 300miles. On the way home on Monday we left Kenmare at 11am and went across to Mitchelstown and then up the motorway, driving time was about 5 hours. Less traffic was what allowed the quicker time.

Galway Internation Rally 2012

Due to the low entries the last couple of years and the move to early February I haven't been to the Galway rally for a while, but with Donnelly being back out Rachel and I headed down for a look.

We set off early on Sunday morning and had a pretty stress free run down the road. There is now a dual carriageway the whole way to Galway city, except for the few miles to my house, it's bloody brilliant! Even with a detour into Dundalk to get some euros for the toll we were down in about 3 1/2 hours, just set the cruise control and relax.

We met up with James Scott and Conor Auld from QUBMC and headed up to Headford for the stages. I don't know if it was Donnelly being back or just the compact route bringing all the spectators into the same area but the hedges were heaving. It's great to see people getting their enthusiasm back for the ITC. We managed to get to 4 of the 9 proper stages which was pretty good going. Unfortunately one of the stages was cancelled but we got to see the cars 3 times so all in all a good days spectating. The MINI looked like a read handful with a flat tyre on stage 6, it was squirming all over the road.

I was very pleased for Darren Gass getting his first ITC win and it was also good to see that Tim McNulty and Eugene Donnelly's still have great pace. If we get an entry list like Galway for the rest of the ITC rounds it's going to be a very tight championship this year.

I took some photos but they are pretty rubbish, I'll blame the camera.