End of Day 1. Tim McNulty holds a 1:46.0 sec lead over Denis Cronin with Alistar Fisher third. Aaron MacHale, Craig Breen & Colm Murphy round out the Top 6.
Absent from the Top 10 are Gareth Machale (out with engine failure on SS3) & Darragh O'Riordan (crashed out on the Gortnagane stage).
Tim McNulty won the Fisher Memorial Trophy with fastest time over 'The Gap'. An elated McNulty said at Parc Ferme: “Yes we had a good run over the Gap, a serious cut even though the tyres were pretty well shot. We had a puncture in the Gortnagane stage and had to do about 6km on the flat. It is great to win the Fisher Award. It is just a pity Gareth MacHale isn’t still in the rally, we really wanted to race him here”.
Denis Cronin, uncle of 2009 BRC Champion Keith, was in poor form after the new engine fitted to the Impreza for this rally was reported to not be pulling as well as the old engine. Cronin set second fastest time over Molls Gap, a few seconds shy of McNulty.
Alistar Fisher has been setting a good pace, but lost a few seconds over 'The Gap', the stage his late uncle Bertie favoured. Fisher also leads Group N by just under a minute & a half.
Phil Collins leads the National section in his Escort over the similar car of Barry Meade.
Marty McCormack leads the Citroen Racing Trophy in his Citroen C2 R2 Max.
Other news from the rally: Kevin O'Donoghue blew up the engine in his Escort on the way to SS3; Barry Meade suffered a bent chassis rail after a heavy landing on Molls Gap; Danny MacBride almost burnt out the clutch at the start of SS5; Thomas Fitzmaurice almost had a nasty accident after the car got out of shape over some bumps heading towards the bridge on Molls Gap & Mark Donnelly crashed his C2 R2 out of the rally on SS3.
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