Galway glory for Frank and Lauren

FRANK Kelly thought the days of him participating in a full championship campaign were over, but after a 10 year hiatus, the Moy driver has made a somewhat surprisingly successful start to the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship after winning the two-wheel-drive battle in the season opener at the Galway International Rally.

With daughter, Lauren, on the notes, Frank guided his MK II Ford Escort ‘Baby Blue’ to an impressive victory in the modified section, beating Rodney Wilton and Conor Murphy to first place on a weekend of drama in the south west.

That trio were locked in a three-way fight for glory after the opening day’s action, but Murphy soon laid down a marker on Sunday’s opener, beating Kelly by around 18 seconds over the 16.8-kilometre test.

“I thought we’d driven the stage really well,” Frank acknowledged.

“We’d taken four or five seconds off Rodney, and I thought Conor might take a second or two off us, but then Lauren said ‘you’re not going to believe it’, and all I could think was ‘where did he get the short cut!

“He just out drove me, there’s no answer other than that.”

Wilton marked his intent on the next stage, taking his second stage win of the weekend, leaving 2.5 seconds between the trio of Escorts with three tests remaining.

However, he blotted his copybook on stage 12, diving into a hedge and having to reverse out.
speed

Meanwhile, Kelly couldn’t find the same speed he was utilising the previous day, and with one stage to go, Murphy held an 11-second lead over the Tyrone man with Wilton a further 6.6 seconds back.

But all was not lost, however, as Kelly capitalised on Murphy’s final stage misfortune when an engine problem slowed his pace.

“We kept tipping away and tipping away, and we got into the last stage of the day trying to stay ahead of Rodney, we certainly weren’t looking to take 11 seconds out of Conor because he was going fast on that stage all day,” Frank observed.

“We pushed as hard as we could to keep Rodney behind us, and it turned out Conor had an engine problem and had dropped power, but we didn’t know that and I couldn’t believe it that we had won it. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe it.”

Frank’s decision to compete in Galway came after some pressure from championship convenor, Sean Hayde, and his own daughter and co-driver, Lauren, the latter of whom pointed out that he was already keen to do West Cork and Donegal, and he thoroughly enjoyed the Cork 20 last year, which was most of the series anyway.

Then, when Kelly discovered the Circuit of Ireland, which was dead against entering in 2024, had a stage that passed his house, the decision was made to make his championship return after a decade away.

“I haven’t done a championship in 10 years; that side of my rallying is over as far as I’m concerned, but I got talked into it by the championship co-ordinator, Sean Hayde, who is a good friend of mine, and Lauren,” he explained.

“They talked me into registering it for it, even though I had some reservations including Galway in February… because it’s Galway in February! But I said, ‘right, we’ll go and do it, drive around it, gather up a few points and we’ll take it from there’. And that plan went out the window when we saw the stages; the beautiful stages. They were unreal.”

Frank feels his success last weekend in Galway came down to ‘boxing clever’, by using his experience, particularly from the last 10 years of competing all over the world, when making his notes.

“We made really, really good notes. We worked very hard on our recce, and we have a fair idea from different events around the world when you’re in against R5 cars and WRC cars where they can cut and where we can’t. So anywhere I thought there was that possibility, we marked ‘mud’ and it turned out to be right,” he explained.

“It saved us a lot of handlings and it kept us on the road. You have to box clever, because we’re not going to beat them with raw pace.”

The Kellys will be back in action during St Patrick’s weekend in West Cork, when they plan to take a similar approach to Galway.

“I love that part of the world, and I have a lot more knowledge of it than I did of Galway so that should stand to something,” Frank added.

“We’ll box clever again, because it’s over three days instead of two, with two night stages on the Friday, so we’ll do another good recce and we’ll take it from there.”