Are you ready for this weekend’s rally triple header?
The rallying year is well and truly underway, and we are only halfway through February… Rally Sweden, Killarney Forestry Rally, and the opening round of the Northern Ireland Rally Championship all take place this weekend.
Reigning World Rally Champions Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen start their part-time WRC campaign surrounded by the snowbanks of Rally Sweden. The Toyota duo wasted no time in showing their untouchable talents with a rapid benchmark on Thursday morning’s shakedown. It is hard to imagine anyone else standing atop the Umea podium come Sunday afternoon.
Theirry Neuville topped the timesheets on WRC’s Rally Monte-Carlo curtain raiser to take an early championship lead in his Hyundai. Second-placed Sebastien Ogier misses Rally Sweden as Elfyn Evans and Ott Tanak look to rein in Neuville’s early championship advantage.
Nikolay Gryazin, Oliver Solberg, and Sami Pajari head another tantilising WRC2 entry which features William Creighton and Liam Regan for the very first time. Creighton takes on his maiden WRC2 program in an M-Sport Ford Fiesta Rally2 after winning last year’s Junior WRC.
Eamonn Kelly and Conor Mohan star in Junior WRC’s record entry of crews this year. A total of 19 young rally drivers are aiming to follow in Creighton’s footsteps and claim rallying’s top prize package of four arrive-and-drive WRC2 events.
Closer to home, over 90 crews are set to tackle Ireland’s first loose-surface rally of 2024, the Killarney Forestry Rally. Jordan Hone is seeded first for the 60-kilometre route in his Ford Fiesta R5.
Hone will be chased up stage one by a pair of Volkswagen Polo R5s driven by Andrew Purcell and Vivian Hamill. Stephen McCann and Derek Mackarel complete the top five in a brace of Fiesta R5s.
A remarkable 14 Rally4 cars will take on the Killarney stages this weekend. Drivers in the ever-competitive category include Billy Coleman Award winner Jack Brennan, Kyle McBride, and Casey-Jay Coleman. Keelan Grogan and Ryan MacHugh look set to continue their rivalry in Killarney after an epic two-day duel on the Galway International Rally.
Tommy Moffett, Jack Harris, and Jack Kennedy are some of the Junior 1000 regulars to have stepped up to the formidable Class 2 and 2A front-wheel-drive battles this year.
An incredible 24 J1000 crews will vie for top honours in Class 21. Ross Ryan leads the charge in his Peugeot 107 ahead of Tommy Furlong and Danny Brady.
The crews will take on six stages on Sunday with the rally based in Castleisland Co-Op Mart.
Further north, almost 80 cars have entered Saturday’s Echlinville Distillery Stage Rally in Kirkistown. The NI Rally Championship opener is headlined by four-time champion Jonny Greer’s Citroen C3 Rally2.
Derek McGarritty, Peadar Hurson, Aaron McLaughlin, and Philip Allen are just a few of the names among his Rally2 competition.
British Rally Championship regulars Alan Carmichael and Kyle White are using the circuit-based event as a BRC warm-up. Both are in unfamiliar cars – Carmichael behind the wheel of a Hyundai i20 Rally2 while White will make his R5 debut in an older Hyundai.
The six-stage rally, all held within the circuit, is due to start at 09:15.
Photos courtesy of M-Sport and Cian Donnellan
