Eamon Boland cleans up in Kelso

Website office(Wexford)

John Dier & Karen O'Dowd

Monday 26th May

Success on the international rally scene has once again come to Wexford man Eamonn Boland with Damien Morrissey navigating when they won the Jim Clark Memorial International Rally held in Scotland on the 24th & 25th of May.
Driving his Hertz backed Subaru Impreza World Rally Car, Eamonn has now had an unprecedented three international rally wins in a row, the previous two coming on the Circuit of Ireland at Easter and the other on the recent Killarney International Rally.
This event didn’t start well for Eamonn, when on the first stage on Saturday morning he spun his car at a junction and as a result found himself down in 4th place, 16 seconds slower than the leader Tim McNulty. Brothers Aaron and Gareth MacHale both in Focus World Rally Cars were another 17 seconds back behind Eamonn in 5th and 6th. Eamonn had a better run on stage 2 but was still 2 seconds slower than McNulty and still held 4th place. Through stages 3 and 4 Boland dropped another 1.5 seconds to McNulty but such was the pace of these two that McNulty held a 20 second lead with Eamonn now moving up to 2nd having passed Guy Wilkes and Mark Higgins, both in Subarus in the process. The rest of the day would continue with McNulty and Boland swapping no more than a second here and there to leave the gap between McNulty in first and Eamonn in second at 23 seconds after stage 12 and at the end of day one.
The only problem Eamonn had during the day was a slight brake vibration which was easily fixed and with the gap at just 23 seconds was gearing himself up for an all out attack the following morning. Gareth MacHale moved up to 3rd overnight just over a minute off the leader after fastest times on stages 11 and 12 with his brother Aaron in 5th.

On the first stage on Sunday morning attack was just what Eamonn and Damien did and came out of stage 13 with a time 2.6 seconds quicker than Gareth MacHale but more importantly, his time was 10 seconds better than McNulty and the gap had suddenly dropped to 16 seconds. The next stage ended in the same order and the ever decreasing gap from Eamonn to the leader was now down to 7 seconds and at service after stage 15 the relentless pressure from Eamonn and Damien had seen them take the lead of the event but by just the slender margin of 3.4 seconds.

With just 2 stages left in this event after service there was a worry over Eamonn’s engine overheating, but with the team having used the old fashioned remedy of putting in radweld, this problem seemed to have been cured.
Eamonn and Damien have had plenty of practice of late at playing out close finishes at events and this one appeared to be heading the same way as on the next stage, stage 16, he stopped the clock with a time of 10 minutes 33.5 seconds, Gareth MacHale stopped it just 0.3 seconds slower and McNulty just another 0.1 seconds back.
All this would leave Boland with a 3.8 second lead over McNulty with just 12 miles of rallying to go. Gareth MacHale was now a distant 3rd over a minute behind the leader. And so it was on to the last 12 miles, and it was Gareth MacHale that emerged fastest with Boland 2nd and McNulty 3rd.

Eamonn had another nail biting finish to an event when, after taking the lead on stage 15 he held on during the final two stages to leave the winning margin at just 4 seconds. Eamonn has now extended his lead in the International Tarmac Rally Championship to 21 points over Tim McNulty in 2nd.

JD