Third place finish for Hetherington after attritional weekend for Tyrone crews

DONAGHMORE’S Adrian Hetherington didn’t know if his prevailing emption on Monday evening was happiness at finishing third overall or good old-fashioned relief because he managed to reach the end of the Roger Albert Clark Rally.

The bi-annual event is normally a test for both man and machine as it takes place over five days and covers over 500 stage kilometres, but this year competitors also had to contend with Storm Arwen who caused havoc in the Kielder Forest stages on Friday night with many competitors left stranded in their cars overnight, including Top Gear host Chris Harris, and it forced the organisers to cancel all of Saturday’s stages.

So, to have come through all that and survived the carnage of icey stages in Wales on Monday that cost another Tyrone crew Paul Barrett and Gordon Noble overall victory, Hetherington was perhaps rightly confused about how to feel while preparing to cross the finish ramp.

“I don’t know which of the two emotions is the strongest!,” he said with a laugh.

“It was unbelievable, unreal. There were times we thought we weren’t even going to get another stage let along get here [to the finish ramp].

“But it was a great experience, a great rally and it was definitely a battle for finishers.”

At one stage, Hetherington, who was partnered by Ronan O’Neill, thought he’d blown his chance of a podium finish, but he manage to salvage the situation on Monday morning.

“We were being chased down by one of our main competitors over the final few stages and we had backed off because we didn’t want to go off,” he explained.

“I went off this morning [Monday] on the very first corner of the very first stage!

“I knew I had three minutes on Ben Friend, who was behind me but the time was going fast! We had to get out and push the car when it wouldn’t start and then we had to go down the stage to turn it round!

“It was good to finish!”

Ten places behind Hetherington was Cookstown’s Keith McIvor in another Ford Escort who finished a superb 13th overall and first in class, while Dungannon’s Alan Jardine endured a stressful final day or two to reach the finish on his debut at the event.

The 70-year-old, who proved his class in the snow once again – he topped the first stage time sheets in the 1994 Circuit of Ireland in the snow, beating the likes of Jimmy McRae in the process – by getting through the treacherous Kielder Forest stages on Friday night as Storm Arwen struck.

But it was on the road to south Wales on Sunday night into Monday morning that things threatened to unravel.

“We were heading down to the south of Wales bout 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning and my jeep that was towing everything, it gave up on us!,” he exclaimed Jardine whose son Bryan and Gary Sheraton were tasked with either getting the vehicle fixed or getting it back to Dungannon on the back of a lorry.

He continued: “And then on the last stage, we were looking forward to a nice wee finish but ha!

“Less than a mile in I noticed the rev counter jumping about a bit and the next thing the whole thing came to a halt, nothing.

“Couldn’t get her started, wouldn’t do a thing for me so I had to get out and I phoned Gerry Buckley and he told me to change the rotor arm and we had a spare rotor arm and an ignition pack, so we changed all that on the stage, fired her up and away she went. We lost seven minutes but we finished!”

Not only did Jardine and co-driver Chris McSherry finish in 62nd overall, but they also managed to come home fourth in class. However, that probably won’t be enough to convince the septuagenarian to return to the RAC as a competitor.

“Finishing was the main thing and fourth in class, which we’re delighted about because we thought we’d have lost it with the seven minutes,” he beamed.

“I said I would do it once for the experience and that’s that and it was some experience!”

And as for Clanabogan’s Barrett and Omagh’s Noble, it was a case of what might have been and that’s the philosophical viewpoint they will have to take when looking back on their Roger Albert Clark Rally experience in 2021.

The local duo went into the gruelling five-day event confident of challenging for the title and for all but the final hours of that period it looked like that belief was well founded.

Having been locked in a battle for the lead on Thursday, Friday and most of Sunday – Saturday’s action was cancelled due to the horrendous weather produced by Storm Arwen – with Jason Pritchard, Barrett and Noble took possession of first place after stage 23 when their rival rolled his Ford Escort RS1800.

That left them sitting well placed with only one day of rallying to go, but with Osian Pryce, who just two weeks ago missed out on the British Rally Championship title when crashing out at the Ulster Rally, pushing hard in what was essentially his back yard they knew the pressure would be intense.

And so it proved with the Welshman clawing back time early on Monday until disaster struck when he lost the front wheel of his Mk II Ford Escort on stage 27.

Unfortunately for Clanabogan driver Barrett and his Omagh navigator Barrett, they then rolled their Escort later on the same stage, breaking the steering arm in the process meaning their challenge was now over.

“Osian Pryce is local to Wales and he was going fast on his home territory – one of the stages starts half a mile from his parents farm,” Noble explained.

“But look, the plan this morning [Monday] was that we knew he was going to come out and lay down a marker to challenge and try to take a lot of seconds off us and put pressure on us.

“So our strategy was to try to match that but it didn’t quite pay off for either of us. He took the wheel off but it was an incredibly icy stage, stretches of ice and very little prediction and unfortunately we got caught out at a fast approach to a fairly slow corner, slid wide and rolled.

“And as we rolled we broke the steering arm, so there was no way we were going to get back out again.

“So we’re mega depressed and disappointed because it was going so well.”

Although disappointed about how the event ended for them, Noble believes there are plenty of positives for the pair to take from their second appearance together at the RAC, having exited on day one in 2019.

“We can take a lot of good from the fact we were competitive from the outset,” he explained.

“From stage one on Thursday night in the dark we were never outside the top three stage times all night long and all the way through the whole rally we were competitive.

“But it was incredibly challenging because not only the long days and the long hours, but also the weather with Storm Arwen was something else.

“The conditions were horrendous but I have to give Paul credit. He rose to the challenge very, very well and anything that was thrown at him he was able to match it.

“We had one bit of a disappointing stage, stage 11 when, with driving sleet and snow we couldn’t see, Pritchard took a bit of time out of us but we reacted very well on stage 12, the last one on Friday night and we actually caught him, taking 50-odd seconds back.

“But the pressure then got to Pritchard on Sunday when he crashed out to give us the lead but unfortunately neither us nor Pryce were able to capitalise on it.

“It’s one of those things.”