2018 Forestry Season for Murphy Motorsport starts with Safety Lesson
The 2018 Valvoline Motorsport Ireland National Forest Rally Championship gets underway with Carrick on Suir Motor Club’s Willie Loughman Memorial Forest Rally. The first major Irish rally of the year incorporates the Michael O’Brien Plant Hire J1000 series for 15-19 year olds which enters its second season and last year’s champion Jason Murphy will be going to Carrick to begin the defence of his title in his Peugeot 107, but before the Murphy Motorsport team loaded up and headed south east there was a very important engagement to attend in Shrule.
Pupils from Lolly and Robins Montessori got a special opportunity to learn first-hand about general Road Safety and the differences between a Rally car and their parent’s road cars. 17 year old Jason, accompanied by his uncle and navigator Matthew gave a demonstration of safety equipment on board a rally car and the importance of wearing seat-belts. This fun and memorable display was very well received with lots of questions and much excitement about the forthcoming J1000 rally series and while none of the audience would qualify under the regs for this years series, one young eager fan was quick to work out he only had 11 more years to wait before he could drive!! After having a go behind the wheel the pupils coloured pictures and made Rally cars out of Lego before waving off their local Rally driver on his adventures.
The nine stage Forest rally event begins at 11am on Saturday for Jason and Matthew and will see the first six stages done in daylight, with the real sting in the tail being the final three stages are completed in darkness. Leaving cert student Jason faces stiff opposition with Aoife Gahan also gearing up for her first full championship season in a Chevrolet Spark while British Rally Championship regular Peter Beaton from Scotland is entered, also in a Peugeot 107.
The championship offers an attractive first overall prize of €1500 along with various other incentives and awards on each of the rounds.
