SS2: McGarrity Extends Lead at Pacenotes Rally Magazine Stages

By NI Rally Championship
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Updated: 23 February 2019

AFTER SS2: Derek McGarrity continued to set the pace on stage two of the Pacenotes Rally Magazine Stages as he extended his lead to almost 14 seconds but Stephen Wright has dropped out of second position after a spin!

“It was a silly mistake about half way around the second lap,” Wright said. “I was a bit too fond of the handbrake and there was some gravel on the road. When we got going again we ended up behind another car so it wasn’t ideal.”

The incident has dropped him down to seventh overall while Alan Carmichael and Samuel Hamill have been elevated into second position after a clean run.

“We didn’t catch any other cars this time,” a delighted Carmichael said, “so we were nine seconds quicker compared to our first stage time.”
Kenny McKinstry and Eathan McColgan were also happier with their stage two progress.

“We had a bit more grip and I was a bit more aggressive,” Kenny said.

Mark Massey and Graeme Stewart made a few changes to the setup of their Fiesta R5 before the start of the stage and were happier with the handling. They hold fourth overall ahead of Derek and Mark McGeehan who were less than four seconds off the pace of rally leader McGarrity and a bit happier with their times.

Darren and Nathan Gass fitted harder tyres to their Skoda Fabia R5 for the stage but reckoned he should have kept what he had on the car for the first stage. “We’re not going to be breaking any records today,” he laughed.
With Wright in seventh, Sean Devine has slotted into eighth but he was another driver unhappy with his tyres.

“I think the tyres are starting to go off,” he revealed. “The compound is maybe too soft.”

Keith White and Paul Mulholland fitted a new battery to their intercom system to fix their stage one intercom troubles and edged further ahead in the two-wheel drive category despite reporting that their car is understeering a little bit. They’re also ninth overall, 2.2 seconds ahead of category rivals James and Heather Kennedy.

“We didn’t overshoot that time!” Kennedy smiled at the stage finish. “I think the power in Keith’s Escort is helping him to edge ahead a little bit as there’s so much grip out there today.”

Kyle White caught a car on the stage and reckons he lost around five to eight seconds. Meanwhile, the big battle between the S11 Subarus of Joe McQuillan and Brian Watson is already over. Watson was unable to fix his stage one steering problems which have forced him out. Looks like the local man McQuillan has got this one in the bag but I suspect there could be a rematch in the near future…

Further down the order, Malcolm Pedlow and Billy Regan struggled to find any grip on stage one with their BMW 2002tii. They were very sideways around the venue and reckon the tyres might need to be changed.

Malcom Pedlow / Billy Regan — Malcolm Pedlow / Billy Regan

Finally, all crews were requested to return to the scrutiny area to be weighed after stage two. Hopefully, the scrutineers won’t uncover any surprises…

Latest results are available from www.rallyscore.net. I’ll have more news after stage three!

Jonathan

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