Cronin crashes out of Rally Scotland

By Jim McGill

Newly-crowned British Rally champ, Cork’s Keith Cronin, endured a miserable opening day to RallyScotland which culminated hi him rolling his new Abarth Punto five miles into the day’s fourth stage, the notorious 11-miler at Drummond Hill.

Initial reports were confusing with team bosses admitting only that: “Keith has gone off the road. He might have rolled or hit a rock, but we’re going in to recover the car. But his rally for today is definitely over.”

Cronin’s day had been punctuated with misery. Two punctures and an excursion into a deep ditch — when he selected first gear instead of reverse on his new Punto — in today’s opening stages resulted in him dropping 45 minutes to the field.

"It's not really been my rally," the 2009 British champ said. "It's been tough. When I went into the ditch, there were no spectators around, we had to run down the road to try and get a few. It took a long time."

To further compound Cronin’s misery, the Irishman was delayed on stage five at Errochty when he got stuck behind a slow-moving car coming through the stage.