O’Brien thrilled with ‘special’ title triumph

THEY say fortune favours the brave and that was certainly the case for Patrick O’Brien and brother, Stephen, on Saturday as they produced an edge of the seat performance to clinch a second successive McKelvey Asbestos Bushwhacker Rally win and with it a first Irish Forestry Rally Championship crown.

Ahead of the event, the O’Briens knew all they had to do to win the Irish title was to finish in front of nearest rival Jordan Hone.

And as first car, that wasn’t going to be easy with the O’Briens essentially cleaning the road for everyone else.

However, by the time of the first service after the first three stages, Patrick and Stephen found themselves just 4.7 seconds behind leader Desi Henry and three adrift of second placed Cathan McCourt – that pair were involved in a separate battle for the Northern Ireland Grave Challenge crown – while Hone was a further 16 seconds behind in seventh.

It was at that point, rather than deciding to sit pretty and maintain their advantage over Hone, the O’Briens made the call to go for overall glory on two fronts in their Skoda Fabia R5.

“I always wanted to win the rally but the championship was a big thing for me,” Patrick explained. “But when we got to first service and we were only five seconds off the lead I knew the road was clean and I could take that time back.

“So when we were standing in service I said ‘we’re going to have a go at it!’.”

And what a call that proved to be and five stages later there was just .1 of a second between the O’Briens and McCourt, while Henry had dropped back to fourth and out of the overall running.

At that point Patrick and Stephen threw further cation to the wind and romped to a 2.5 second victory in the end after two scintillating wins over Lough Braden to seal the Bushwacker crown for a second time and their first Irish title, much to the delight and relief of Patrick, who was rewarded for his risks on the day.

“It worked out fine in the end up!,” beamed the Motorsport Ireland Academy member.

“With two stages to go we were told we were .1 of a second behind Cathan, so we just pulled the belts and decided we’d have a massive push at it.

“I completely forgot about the Championship at that stage, it was out of my mind!

“Some of the stuff we were getting away with was mental! We were doing stuff in fifth gear we shouldn’t have but it was so close I couldn’t let it go!”

Having won the Bushwhacker a year previously for the first time in a rented Ford Fiesta R5, O’Brien feels this year’s success was all the better because it came in his own family’s Skoda Fabia, which proved a game changer after a frustrating start to the campaign.

“It was brilliant to win the Irish title at the Buswhacker but it felt even more special to win the Bushwhacker this time because we won the rally, we won the championship and we did it in our own car – it’s not just my car, it’s all the boys’ car, so that made it that wee bit sweeter,” explained O’Brien, who won the final four events in a row.

“The season didn’t start well in Killarney. We were leading the rally but then we hit a stone in the middle of the road that damaged the propshaft. It was just pure bad luck but once we got the Skoda it turned around for us.

“The car has been unbelievable and the abuse it took yesterday [Saturday], I don’t know how it’s still going!

“It’s some car, the stuff we were fit to do in it was mental!”