Rally of the Lakes 2009 – Day 1 results: Gareth MacHale holds slender lead

lakes logo Rally of the Lakes 2009 Day 1 results: Gareth MacHale holds slender lead

Gareth MacHale (Ford Focus WRC05) holds a slender 2.2 second lead at the end of the first day on the OSI Killarney Rally of the Lakes 2009.

Right behind MacHale is tarmac championship leader Eugene Donnelly, who speeded up during the course of day, in the "wee Skoda", after adopting a cautious approach this morning. Eamonn Boland is third with the Subaru S12C WRC and still in the hunt as is less than 10s behind the leader.

Early pace setter Tim McNulty was quickest up The Gap this morning but lost the lead on SS4 after he went off the road and damaged the suspension, losing over 40s in the process.

Overnight leader Gareth MacHale commented at the end of day 1 to rallynews.net:

I was driving neat not ten tenths on that final stage. There’s a long way to go on this rally, the meat of the rally is really tomorrow today was easy!

Aaron MacHale is sixth in the 06 Focus ahead of Denis Cronin's Subaru WRC. Alan Ring leads Group N in seventh overall driving his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo.

Wesley Patterson heads the modified category by two minutes in his Escort and Craig Breen has won the FST IE section of the rally.

Main casualty of the day was Patrick Elliott who crashed his Subaru S12B WRC out of the event on SS4.

Video clip Day One Rally of the Lakes

Killarney Rally of the Lakes Leaderboard Day 1

1 Gareth MacHale/Brian Murphy (Focus WRC) 57.22.3
2 Eugene Donnelly/Paddy Toner (Fabia WRC) 57.24.5
3 Eamonn Boland/MJ Morrissey (Impreza WRC) 57.32.1
4 Tim McNulty/David Moynihan (Impreza WRC) 57.56.8
5 Aaron MacHale/Killian Duffy (Focus WRC) 58.09.5
6 Denis Cronin/Helen O'Sullivan (Impreza WRC) 59.58.1
7 Alan Ring/Adrian Deasy (Lancer N) 1.01.03.7
8 Colm Murphy/Martin Flannery (Impreza N) 1.01.38.8
9 Alastair Fisher/Barry McNulty (Lancer N) 1.02.07.2
10 Daragh O'Riordan/Sean McCarthy (Clio S1600) 1.03.21.9

Source: rallynews.net