Deazley taking a break after a bitter-sweet end to his season

Gareth Deazley’s name was missing from the start list of the past weekend’s Midland Stages Rally, which was the first round of both the National and Border Rally Championships.

The Dromore native has decided to take at least a year out from the sport ahead of his upcoming nuptials to Rachel McConnell later this week and after a massive crash at the 2024 season-ending Donegal Harvest Rally last October.

The 30-year-old was enjoying one of the best seasons of his career up to that point last year, winning his classes in the Top Part West Coast Championship and the Border Championship as well as earning the Danny Caddye Memorial Cup, The Pride of the Championship Award and he also finished second in the Motorsport Ireland National Championship behind the wheel of his Rally4 Ford Fiesta.

He defeated Billy Coleman Award winner Craig Rahill to two of those titles, with the Cavan man winning the other and while delighted with how the majority of his season went, Deazley admits he’s just thankful to have now walked away from a nasty ‘off’ in Donegal which resulted in he and co-driver Oisin Joyce being left unconscious and spending time in Letterkenny University Hospital.

“I’m not too bad [now]. I still have a bit of pain in my neck if I’m sitting still for a long period of time, but it could be a lot worse,” he acknowledged.

“Going by the onboard, I was carrying 10 or 15 miles per hour too hard into the corner and just as I braked the car went light at the back and we were just 500 metres from the start line, so we didn’t have enough heat in the tyres. So when the back went light, I corrected it the other way but there was a bump on the inside which spun the car right around and it put Oisin’s side into the tree.

“We were in fifth gear at that point but I don’t remember it. I was knocked out for 10 and a half minutes, they told me, and Oisin was out for nine and a half or nine.

“It was fifth gear, so you’re talking 90 to 100 miles per hour – once we spun that would knock a wee bit off [the speed] – but you’re a complete passenger and from the onboard, you can hear me once it starts to go and once the impact of the tree happens there’s complete silence.

“Normally when you see an accident, you hear the driver and navigator going ‘are you ok, are you ok?’ but there’s just dead silence.

“We were out cold so it was actually a spectator who pressed the SOS for us.”

Fortunately for Gareth and Oisin, their car was well-prepared by Raphoe’s McConnell Motorsport and all the safety gear inside the Fiesta did its job, although Gareth admits he was particularly lucky his side of the vehicle avoided the main impact.

“I’m all right, I’m stiff and sore and [the healthcare professionals] said I could be for up to a year after severe whiplash but thankfully all the safety gear did its job,” he added.

“The [roll] cage didn’t break, it just bent. It was then cut at both sides to let us out, but if we were in an older car or one that wasn’t as well put together and that’s the plain and simple of it. Or if it hit my side, with me sitting that bit further forward, I wouldn’t be here either.

“Oisin’s seat actually broke off the rails, which sheered, so he actually came across and hit me for a second impact, which you can see on the onboard as well.”

Having gone into the season on more of a whim than with a long-term concrete plan, Deazley admits he is proud of what he achieved, although the ending was ‘bitter-sweet’.

“I really enjoyed the season, we had a couple of good results against Craig [Rahill] who is now the quickest young talent in Ireland. He got the Billy Coleman Award, so to finish second behind him in one Championship and to win the other two ahead of him is definitely a big achievement for us,” he beamed.

“I was actually going to pack it in before buying that car just to give myself a break from it. I’m getting married so I was packing it in for that but then the boys in the south were like ‘you never come down here to race, this is where the real competition is, blah, blah’ and I was like, I don’t want to go out saying I didn’t fight for it so I ended up buying that car and we ended up achieving more than we ever expected to achieve.

“It’s a really awkward one because all season we never put a mark on the car, we never had to paint the car anywhere at all and we won the two Championships, we got a special award and we were second in another Championship.

“If we’d done worse throughout the year and that had happened, it would have been really hateful but for it to happen after the year we had makes it bitter-sweet.

“I really enjoyed the year and it wouldn’t put me off but I’d make sure I have the right equipment around me that’s for sure.”

While unsure what his next step in the world of rallying will be or when he will take it, Deazley has enjoyed the last decade or so behind the wheel, during which time he has competed alongside the world’s best and won several titles against the odds with a budget that is the fraction of his rivals.

He started off alongside his dad Raymond competing in night navigation rallies before moving on to Rallysport Association events and then into the Northern Ireland Championship, winning the junior title at the age of 22 in 2017.

That success earned him a place at Wales Rally GB, which was then a round of the World Rally Championship and after a successful fundraising drive he travelled across the Irish Sea to mix it alongside the best crews on the planet.

“With the prize of winning the junior title we got to go to Wales Rally GB that year, which was a good achievement,” he enthused.

“We worked hard to get the funds together to do it because it was at the end of the 2017 year. It was my first competitive year in a rally car, which was obviously a big financial commitment and we did a bonus ball for a passenger seat ride to get money raised to help cover the boat and I hired a car at that stage because I still had one round of the Northern Ireland Championship to do.

“It was good to have all the support and for everyone to come on board, it was overwhelming. And the buzz around the [service] park was unreal.

“After that it was about keeping progressing and I’d still like to do a rally in a foreign country, which I’ve never done, so that’s a goal to do at some stage but it won’t be this year!”

While he thoroughly enjoyed his WRC experience and while he admits it fuels a desire he still has to compete at a higher level, he has to be realistic about what his future in the sport holds because money is king in motorsport and without a lot of it, there’s only so much you can do and after losing around £30,000 on the Fiesta he crashed in Donegal he needs time to regroup before he can go again.

“[The reason for nor competing in 2025] is mainly financial. We took a big hit but it’s not the end,” he said defiantly. “But you still want to give it a go at a higher level, be that the British Championship or the Irish Tarmac Championship here, you’d still like to do something like that.

“The talent is obviously there, but it’s trying to get all the stars to align before that.

“Years go you would have got the break for being the quickest driver but now you have to be bringing hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds to get to WRC level. To do even the Irish Tarmac Championship you’re talking twenty or thirty thousand a round. It’s colossal figures that are involved in the sport, so I don’t think it will ever get to that level but it’s always something you’d like to even get a run out in an R5 car to say you’ve done it.

“To do even a one day rally which is what we’re doing at the minute, you’re still out a couple of thousands every time but if you’re going to do a two or three day event you have to add in accommodation for everybody, etc, it’s a completely different ball game.

“It all adds up.”

At the same time, though, money isn’t everything and as he has proved before, talent shines through and he admits to being as proud as he is surprised by what he has achieved over his driving career so far.

“Even in the [Ford Fiesta] R200 we did a lot of work and put it in places we shouldn’t have – pace wise and finance wise we probably shouldn’t have done half of what we did but we did it,” he beamed.

“And I never started out to do three championships last year, it was to do the Border or the National because I always said I’d like to do the Southern Championship to say that I’d done it, so I’m very happy with what I’ve achieved, I’d never have dreamed of doing half of what I’ve done.”