World Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb showed his class on Sunday to take a clear victory in the Donegal International Rally.
His visit to this Irish Tarmac Championship event was billed as a major test session for the Citroen team ahead of November’s Rally Ireland World Championship event. However Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena soon mastered the tough, rough Donegal stages and his engineers tuned the chassis on the Citroen C4 WRC car to enable Sebastian to get the best out of his BF Goodrich tyres. He finished the three-day event more than two minutes ahead of the Subaru of Mark Higgins.
Reigning Champion Eugene Donnelly had to work hard throughout the weekend to overcome some mechanical delays but took a valuable third overall in the end to gain another batch of all-important Tarmac Championship points. After losing time on the first day, the Reid Motorsport team had to re-plan their strategy for the rest of the rally to get Donnelly back to a points scoring position. By Sunday the reigning Tarmac Champion was flying, matching Loeb’s time on the Atlantic Drive test. Third overall but second registered Tarmac driver earned valuable Championship points.
“The varied weather conditions here meant that it was neither really wet nor totally dry which does not suit us at all and we had a number of small but time consuming problems,” commented Eugene at the end of the rally. “However once again the Reid Motorsport team showed its true fighting spirit, even changing a turbo pipe before the last stage and we got the result we hoped for after losing time on the first day. We will have time now to give the car a thorough check and go testing before the next round on the Isle of Man”.
Donnelly’s record on the Manx rally is impressive. He took victory last year and has finished second twice and third once. The Manx Rally takes place on the Isle of Man, July 19-21 and Eugene will again be relying on his BFGoodrich tyres and aiming for victory and maximum points. SMcC.
