Wood wins for three in a row
Welsh victor in Wexford rally
STEVE WOOD came into the event off the back of two wins in a row, and he was wanting to join that elite band such as Stephen Murphy, Eamonn Boland and a very few others who have won the Wexford stages rally in three consecutive years.
There had been excitement among local rally followers that a previous local winner, James Stafford, was a late entry and would put his local knowledge to good use on the roads of Co. Wexford to lay down some kind of challenge to Wood and make him work for the win, or maybe Stafford might even go for the big prize himself.
Sadly, this challenge was not to happen as the Darrian of Stafford would not fire up at full power on Saturday morning, leaving no option but to pull out, as it was going to be either all or nothing.
As predicted by most, Wood, in a Subaru Imprezza WRC, took up where he left off twelve months ago and put in a fast stage time on the first stage of the day in Templeshanbo, a feat he was to pull off in every test of the day except the eighth, the third and last pass through Buck’s Bridge.
Meirion Evans was seen as being the only realistic challenger to Wood in the Hyundai i20 R5 and so it was to be for day one. Evans was the only driver to set a fastest stage time other than Wood, on the aforementioned eighth.
The battles that were really starting to whet the appetite of the fans on the ditches and on their smart devices were the ones going on between Gary Kiernan, John Dalton and Frank Kelly for the positions from third to fifth.
It was so nip and tuck between these three that on one stage, SS3, the first time through the Long Lane, their times for the stage were only seperated by 0.3 of a second.
Kiernan was to hold station in third place for almost the whole day with his Escort MK2, and that of fifth place man, Frank Kelly, was making a sandwich of the Darrian of John Dalton.
This stayed like that until the last stage of the day, when a mechanical fault slowed Kiernan down by just about half a minute to allow Dalton to make it an all-Welsh podium overnight.
From a local point of view, Richard Moore was the leading driver as the day progressed, but a possible battle between himself and Liam Howlett, both in Escort MK2s, never happened due to Howlett seing his rally come to an early end due to a ditch shortly after the start of SS2.
Richard Cleary, Leon Galvin and James Bradley made the first day a fairly good one at the office for local crews, with Moore finishing seventh at the end of day one, with the other three drivers eleventh, 13th and 15th respectively.
The big change on Sunday was the demise of Gary Kiernan on the first stage in Boolaboy. He had non-terminal clutch problems the night before but now it was terminal ditch problems.
As on the first day, despite Evans taking the fastest time on the first stage, then Wood hauled it back and more on the second stage.
The gap remained more or less the same for the rest of the day, a second one way or another for the rest of the stages.
The other casualty on the second day was Tomas Davies, with his rally coming to an end on SS13. At that stage there were three local crews in the top ten, but one stage more reduced that to two as Leon Galvin disappeared off the time sheets.
James Bradley had kept the purple and gold flag flying just outside the top ten. He had risen from 15th to eleventh, with the cars in front of him coming to premature ends.
In the last few stages, either down to Meirion Evans getting used to the i20, or maybe Steve Wood making sure the car would get back into HQ in one bit, Evans took the last two fastest stage times but the margin did not make any difference to the top three.
Needless to say, the ferry on the way back on Sunday evening made for a good place to be for the three crews after their wipe-out raid of the rally.
Notable drives by local crews included Barry Hennessy winning Class 1, John Hayes in Class 3, John Barry in Class 9, Nigel Molloy in Class 10, James Bradley in Class 11F, and Kenny O’Brien in Class 9A.