Three-day boost for West Cork Rally in 2024
The West Cork International Rally will become a three-day event next year. The Irish Tarmac Rally Championship’s second round of 2024 will have an extra four stages on Friday, with two of them running in darkness.
West Cork becomes the second Irish Tarmac event to run over three days, following in the footsteps of the giant that is the Donegal International Rally.
The change means that stage one will start on Friday afternoon, rather than Saturday morning. Two stages completed two times each offer an extra day of action around West Cork’s Clonakilty base.
Friday’s second loop will take place in darkness – the last time West Cork had a night stage was in 2017.
Cork Motor Club saw an opportunity to run a better value-for-money event by switching to a three-day format with the move also allowing historic crews to take on all of Saturday and Sunday’s stages for the first time.
Speaking about the changes, club chairman Greg McCarthy was excited about West Cork’s latest initiative:
“Cork Motor Club always tries to improve and build on its events. Over West Cork Rally’s 40-year history, there have always been new things trialled. We always want to improve the rally year-on-year and hopefully this is another step in that direction.
“There was a night stage on the 2017 West Cork Rally and it received huge praise with locals coming out in big numbers to witness the spectacle.
“I think the night-time stages will give our up-and-coming young drivers great experience too. Stages ran in darkness are quite common in Europe so this will be helpful for those looking ahead in their rallying journey.
“We hope that it will have a positive impact on everyone, including people in the local area since the rally is now starting a day earlier.
“Clonakilty has welcomed us with open arms for over 40 years and hopefully we can keep that tradition going.
“We did a survey with last year’s competitors and we received a fantastic response. 85% of the respondents were in favour of a three-day rally and some of the people against it simply had the view of ‘if it’s not broken don’t fix it.’
“The rally definitely isn’t broken but let’s try to go one better and do something different.”
The West Cork Rally has been won by Josh Moffett and Andy Hayes for the past two years. No doubt the 2024 edition will be as hard fought and entertaining as its recent events.
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Photo by D Harrigan Images
