IRISH TARMAC CANCELLATION WAS “THE RIGHT THING TO DO”
The 2021 Irish Tarmac
Rally Championship was cancelled last week, a decision a leading competitor labelled as “definitely the right thing to do”.
Over 12 months have passed since the last Irish Tarmac round, Galway International, but the 2021 series was scrapped just five weeks into the year.
The Galway, West Cork and Circuit of Ireland events had already been cancelled so Colman Hegarty, chairman of series organiser TROA, believes: “ongoing restrictions mean that there is a degree of uncertainty regarding the other four events”.
He added: “The board decided it was in the best interest of all stakeholders to cancel this year’s championship. Should one or all of the four remaining events run in the latter part of 2021, TROA pledges its full support to those events.”
Series regular Joe McGonigle told MN he doesn’t expect rallying to resume in Ireland until late summer, and thought the championship would have been unfeasible.
“As much as I’d love to be rallying it’s definitely the right thing to do,” McGonigle said. “If we ran a rally in June and there was a coronavirus outbreak in that area that would be really harmful to rallying and it could be very hard for us to go rallying in that area again.
“If a rally like the Cork 20 tries to run, Cork 20 will have a reserve list – it’s a great rally anyway. But, at this stage, if somebody organised a rally around Tesco car park everybody would be doing it! Anything at all that runs is going to be very well supported.”