‘I JUST couldn’t be better!’ declared Ring’s Darragh O’Donovan (Honda Civic) following his emphatic victory in the junior category of the Clonakilty Park Hotel West Cork Rally.
Co-driven by Lisavaird’s Michael White, they finished a whopping four minutes and 26s ahead of the Kerry/Limerick crew of Jamie O’Rourke/Conor Cross.
‘It finally worked,’ he said, ‘I suppose we had a point to prove to ourselves and everything came together. Normally when we finish a stage, Mike checks the times from the guys in Class 11F and if we are within 10 or 15s a stage, we know we are going to be there or thereabouts. On the first run of Ardfield, our time was actually faster than the best time in Class 11F.’
While O’Donovan would have enjoyed a closer battle in the juniors, he was also cognisant of recent times. ‘Yes, it would have been nice,’ he said, ‘but we have been through so many days battling, it was nice to get a clean run. When we set out on Sunday morning, we were just concentrating on ourselves and the road in front of us. We were going on maximum attack.
‘We pushed hard on the Sam’s Cross stage and nearly had an off when it locked up. When we saw our time after, we were able to slacken it a bit as we had a good lead.’
While they concentrate on the junior series within the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship, their next outing is the Rally of the Lakes in Killarney, where they will also continue to contest the IPS Packaging Southern 4 Rally Championship.
