Weekend Round-Up: O'Sullivan captures 2022 British Rally Championship
Irish eyes were undoubtedly smiling in the forests of Yorkshire after several Motorsport Ireland licence holders secured coveted British Rally Championship titles on the series' penultimate round, Trackrod Rally Yorkshire, over the weekend.
The biggest winner was co-driver Noel O’Sullivan. The Killarney man guided Welsh driver Osian Pryce to victory in both the rally and the outright championship.
After taking the lead in the opening Dalby test under the cover of darkness on Friday night, Pryce and O’Sullivan were never headed. Despite having the weight of a title tilt on their shoulders, they brushed it aside with aplomb, winning four of the six stages to return to the Filey seafront finish to add their name to the coveted BRC trophy, joining the likes of Colin McRae, Ari Vatanen, Stig Blomqvist and Hannu Mikkola.
Their chief opposition in both the title race and rally came from the all-Irish crew of West Cork’s Keith Cronin and Killarney’s Mikie Galvin.
Cronin made a comeback to the British Championship tour in a quest for a record-equalling fifth title. Galvin was chasing his second having partnered Cronin to his fourth title in 2017.
They were unable to challenge for the lead over the event’s remaining 60 -competitive kilometres and eventually finished second.
Being seven points off the championship lead going into the event, they had to win in Yorkshire to bring the title battle to the final round next month.
Although defeated, Cronin was first to praise his year-long rivals.
“Osian and Noel have been outstanding all year, they thoroughly deserve their British Championship. It has been a pleasure to compete against them, we had good craic with them on the rallies, it was like a group of friends meeting up really,” he said.
There was Irish success in other categories too, with Northern Ireland’s Alan Carmichael and his Monaghan co-driver Arthur Kierans winning the British National Rally Championship on the same event.
While Donegal’s Eamonn Kelly had wrapped up the Junior British Rally Championship title on the previous round he went to Yorkshire to ensure co-driver Conor Mohan could also claim the honour. It was mission accomplished as the Fiesta Rally4 pairing were head and shoulders above their fellow contenders and took their fourth win of the season.
On the home front, Ryan Loughran and Paddy McCrudden won the 2022 Garda Síochána Motor Club Germaine’s of Baltinglass Rally in County Wicklow in their Ford Escort RS.
The Cookstown driver and his Donegal co-driver finished the event with a 5.3-second margin over the Kerry crew of Conor Murphy and Sean Collins in a similar car.
Meath-based racing driver Alex Dunne will have to wait until the final round of the ROKiT British F4 championship before he will be confirmed as champion. The series heads to Brands Hatch’s iconic Grand Prix circuit over the weekend of October 7-9. While Dunne has a commanding championship lead, he failed to put it out of reach of his main rival, Briton Ollie Gray across three races at Silverstone at the weekend.