Maguire is aiming to complete the double in big Galway Rally

THE Triton Showers National Rally Championship reaches the penultimate point (Round 7) on Sunday with the nine-stage Lady Gregory Hotel Galway Summer Rally which is based in Gort.

The organisers, the Galway Motor Club with Mark Parsons as clerk of the course, have attracted an entry of 140 crews all of whom will be hoping to finish the event that takes place over the classic stages like Lough Cutra, the Black Road and Brady’s Yard. Servicing is in the mart complex in Gort.

Three times national champion and last year’s winner Monaghan’s Niall Maguire (Subaru WRC) heads the entry. The national championship regular is currently third in the Triton series and in line for yet another top three finish.

Outgoing champion Clonmel’s Roy White (Ford Fiesta WRC) will be keen to get that inaugural victory in the latest round of the series. There is also a sub-plot to his participation and while he has seen his own title and the Vard Memorial Trophy taken by Sam Moffett on the last round, the Sligo Rally, White’s navigator James O’Brien will be determined to hold on to the Noel Smith Trophy for the top co-driver.

Opposition for that award comes from Sam Moffett’s co-driver Karl Atkinson, like O’Brien, he also hails from Cork.  Atkinson missed Moffett’s opening round win in Nenagh and as Moffett is not competing on Sunday, Atkinson will co-drive for another Monaghan driver – Stephen Wright (Ford Fiesta R5) – his brother-in-law. For Atkinson to deny O’Brien the co-driver’s title, he needs a top five finish in Galway and on the final round in Bantry (Fastnet Rally) at the end of October, irrespective of what O’Brien achieves with Roy White.

Sandwiched between White and Wright in Galway is former champion, Warrenpoint’s Peadar Hurson (Ford Fiesta WRC), who won the national title all of 25 years ago and will certainly be a contender for outright victory in Galway, an event he won two seasons ago, driving a Subaru WRC.

The top ten also includes a plethora of Ford Escorts in the hands of Gary Kiernan, Brian Brogan, Frank Kelly and Wesley Patterson along with Shane Maguire (Mitsubishi) and the Subaru WRC of title sponsor Kevin Barrett.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.