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.

Circuit of Ireland Rally 2012

We got a proper treat this year with the Circuit of Ireland being included as the 3rd round of the IRC. It's easy to get sucked into thinking that our local drivers are some of the best in the world and that our stages are so specialised that our local guys would be able to match the professionals but that idea was totally blown out of the water over the weekend. The top IRC drivers are truly a level above our home grown experts. The total time for Hanninen in the S2000 Fabia over the 15 stages was 1:58:21.9 and the total time for Gass in the Impreza WRC was 2:01:59.5. So Hanninen was 3:37.6 quicker in a lower class of car, that it totally amazing. Our local men don't hang about and their in car footage is very impressive but the in car from Hanninen and Mikkelsen over the weekend was like nothing I've ever seen before. It's was terrifying to watch, they looked completely out of control, all of the time! I don't know how anyone can drive that fast. It looks like corners are coming up faster than it is possible to react to them, mind blowing.

The Circuit did a great job of promoting itself this year and the whole country seemed to know about it. I hope that other events will now see the benefit of more promotion and rallying can come back to the levels of popularity it enjoyed in the 70's and 80's.

Eurosport Coverage, Day 1, Circuit of Ireland 2012

Eurosport Coverage, Day 2, Circuit of Ireland 2012

Circuit of Ireland 2012 International Results

Circuit of Ireland 2012 national Results


Karen Swanston helped Rachel and I helped out with our passage control at the end of the Lisburn Powerstage on Saturday. It's pretty handy as it's all over in a couple of hours but it is crazy hectic for those 2 hours. They were trying to streamline things this year by having us working directly beside the stop control but it didn't really work out because we just ended up getting in each others way, but we made it through without too many problems. The biggest drama of the day was Mikkelsens crash which cost him 40 seconds, a perforated ear drum and any chance of winning the rally.