Young Kerry rally driver Kieran Reen’s Rally Academy debut

RISING Kerry rally driver Kieran Reen got his first real taste of the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy last week.

The Headford-based driver was nominated for the Young Rally Driver of Year Billy Coleman Award last year following his Southern 4 Junior Rally Championship win.

While the Honda Civic driver did not win the coveted overall award, he was selected as a member of the academy, a special mentoring and training programme set up by the Irish governing body, to help drivers and navigators under 26 years of age make their next steps in the sport.

In normal circumstances, academy members would meet several times a year and members would be given tuition in essential career-orientated skills like fitness, media training and driver coaching as part of their year-long membership of the programme.

A fitness programme did go ahead in January but the main activities of the academy were put on hold as a result of the national shutdown until last Friday.

Nine drivers and a similar number of co-drivers attended last week’s briefing at Mondello Park in county Kildare.

Candidates were given the opportunity to drive a Hyundai i20 R5 as part of the training course. Reen is the only Kerry competitor in this year’s academy and follows Killarney driver Colin O’Donoghue who was a member of the inaugural academy last season.

“It was my first time in a lefthand drive or four-wheel drive rally car with a sequential gearbox,” Reen said. “The whole day was a great experience, I never thought I would get a chance to drive one of these cars, in all I got around twelve laps around Mondello, before the closest I got to these cars was standing on the ditch watching them pass on local rallies.”

The programme is funded by the Team Ireland Foundation through support by philanthropist and rally driver John Coyne.

“The MI Rally Academy, now entering its second year, is designed

to develop, support and promote young Irish rally drivers as they climb the ladder to success at the sport’s highest level, representing the best of Irish talent on the world stage,” said Sean McHugh, coordinator of the MI Rally Academy.

GERMANY-BASED Kerry motorsport engineer Richard Browne took social distancing measures to new extremes after he helped Swedish driver Johan Kristofferson win the first major international rallycross event of the season on Sunday.

Browne, from Firies, works for Volkswagen Motorsport in Hanover. He is the dedicated chassis engineer for Kristoffersson’s Volkswagen Polo for this year’s FIA World Rallycross Championship.

The world championship is due to get underway at the Höljes Circuit in Sweden in late August after being delayed by coronavirus restrictions.

An invitational meeting took place at the same venue last weekend where world champion Kristoffersson used his own Kristoffersson Motorsport (KMS) Volkswagen Polo and not the factory version assigned to him for the world series.

Browne was unable to travel to the event but was able to offer his driver advice over the phone which helped the former world champion take a dominant win on Sunday.

Browne’s Hanover home is over 1,200km away from the famed Swedish track - well outside the recommended two-metre social distance guidelines.

The event was all part of a bigger plan by Kristoffersson and the factory team to prepare for the sport’s full-time return next month.

“It wasn’t our car. It is their own KMS built car. I was on the phone discussing through the free practices and the heats, but I don’t know the car well, so it’s difficult to advise!” he said.

“We are ramping up for his season now. There is a planned two-day test in Sweden the week before the FIA WRX championship starts. I can’t wait, to be honest, it will be nice to get back at it again.”