MCKENNAWINSAS PURCELL TAKES POINTS
Barry Mckenna’s bid to win the Irish Forest Rally Championship remains in full flight after the Monaghan native jetted in from New York and won the two-day Cork Forest Rally that counted as two separate rounds of the series. In championship terms, he netted two second places as his rivals Josh Moffett and Andrew Purcell took a championship win and a third place apiece to ensure a three-way tussle for the title.
Both days consisted of six stages (three stages run twice) with Sunday’s terrain of a faster variant. Mckenna led initially – 4.2 seconds in front of Adrian Hetherington (Toyota Corolla WRC) with Moffett a fraction of a second further behind. Purcell was fourth and 5.7 seconds off the lead.
However, Purcell blasted through SS2 and into the lead ahead of Mckenna, who stalled his Fiesta; Moffett had a huge moment and while he slipped 23.3 seconds further behind in third he admitted he was extremely fortunate not to roll.
For the remainder of the day Purcell and Mckenna traded places with Purcell ending the leg as leader albeit by 1.7 seconds and duly claiming maximum points for that leg. Moffett, who beat the bogey on SS5 along with Mckenna, was 14.2 seconds behind in third followed by Hetherington and the Fiesta R5s of Stephen Mccann and Cathan Mccourt.
On Sunday’s opener Mckenna closed to within a fraction of Purcell and went ahead on SS8. Purcell felt his Fiesta didn’t have the same top speed of either Mckenna’s and Moffett’s car – both of whom were in Class 20 as opposed to Class 5. Hetherington was out with turbo woe.
On SS9 Purcell lost over 10s to the leading pair, as Mckenna led by 13.2s. Moffett won the penultimate stage to cut the margin to 12 seconds. That proved to be the final margin as they both beat the bogey time on the last stage, with Purcell third.
Shane Mcgirr (Ford Escort) won the two-wheel-drive category, taking advantage of David Crossen Escort’s mechanical failure. Niall Devine (Mitsubishi) won Gp N, Jordan Hone’s Opel Adam R2 won the Juniors and Peter Beaton (Peugeot 107) topped Junior 1000.