For those that aren’t all that familiar with the Irish Rally Scene , Kevin Lynch (KPL Contracts) is a rally driver who has a couple of WRC cars, his son Sean set up a production company and has created this video of his aul lad in action, so on an August day in 2009 the Nutts Corner area was covered in tyre scree and filled with the sounds of Rally Cars doing what they do best.
Former World Rally Championship driver Pentti Airikkala died yesterday after a long illness.
The Finn, 64, was a frequent top-line competitor in the 1970s and 1980s, and tackled a total of 36 WRC events, mostly driving rear-wheel drive Vauxhall/Opel cars like the Chevette HS and Magnum Coupe.
A former Finnish and Scandinavian rally champion, longtime UK resident Airikkala also won the British title in 1979.
He is probably best remembered though, when he drove a Vauxhall Chevette HS for the DTV team in the late ’70s. In winning the 1979 Circuit of Ireland Rally (the year he won the British championship), Airikkala became the first and only ‘foreign’ driver to do so and later regarded this win as the finest of his long distinguished career.
“The Circuit of Ireland is a very special rally – very long, very hard, very competitive. I am proud to be the first European to win,” Pentti said at the time.
It was a busy weekend for motorsport championships all round with a number of championships being decided. In a great weekend for Irish motorsport, two Irish pairings won major rally championships in Britain and Italy and a Meath driver is the favourite to take an American racing title. Keith Cronin from Bantry and his Limerick co-driver Greg Shinnors scored their third International win of the year, to clinch the British Rally Championship, the first Irish crew to take the title since the legendary Billy Coleman, 35 years ago.
The 23 year old West Cork driver, the 2007 winner of the Billy Coleman Award for Young Rally Driver of the Year, won three of the six rounds in his Cremins Coaches Mitsubishi Evo 9 and finished second in two more behind three times champion Mark Higgins.
Maynooth’s Kevin Barrett, co driven today by Damien Connolly, has brought his Triton Showers Subaru Impreza WRC to a maiden victory today on this Mor Oil backed Galway Summer Rally. Kevin was 6s behind Niall Maguire starting the final stage, but over the 12.45km of that tortuous Kilcoona road Kevin was 12s faster than his rival to win by 6s. It really was the culmination of a very exciting day that saw Barrett in rejuvenated form to score many fastest times, but he also had a few mishaps as well including punctures. He made no mistakes on that final push though and it would be hard to find a more popular winner.