Good times and tough times for Irish crews
Three all-Irish crews assembled at the start in Rome but only one was left standing at the finish in Fiuggi two days later.
While Craig Breen and Paul Nagle made it through in a fine fourth overall on the first Tarmac start for MRF’s development tyre, Callum Devine and Brian Hoy and William Creighton and Liam Regan were out of luck.
Devine’s Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy Hyundai’s engine failed at the finish of SS3, while iffy electrics stopped Creighton’s Fiesta Rally4 on the final afternoon.
“There was a fast corner through a dip which we cut and there was a bang as we went over some stones,” Devine explains. “It turned out that in the compression a stone punched through the sumpguard and holed the sump, causing the engine to lose all its oil.”
Creighton added: “The guys did what they could in service but in the first stage after [SS10] it cut out at a hairpin. We got it going again but then everything died.
It’s disappointing but I’ve got to take a lot of positives out of it.
“I was up in fourth at the first service and I didn’t think I’d be anywhere near that with a new car on an event like this.”
For Breen, the eldest of the trio, the result was unexpected. “I don’t think we could have expected to be so high up on literally the first rally of the programme,” Breen said. “We’re obviously really pleased but the more exciting thing is there is so much space to make [the tyre] better and better so it’s exciting for the future.
“I was flat out from the first run of free practice all the way to the last stage, the rhythm stayed the same through the whole rally. I pushed as hard as I could from the very start.”