Jason Murphy takes J1000 Championship opener

As the dew still hung on the trees for the Carrick on Suir Forestry Rally, Mayo crews were getting geared up to tackle into the stages. With tricky conditions out on the stages, crews were cautious for the first loop of stages.

At 16 years old Shrule’s Jason Murphy was at the wheel of his C-sport prepared Peugeot 107 with his uncle Matthew calling the notes. The pair settled in well taking an early lead in their class. Pulling away as the day progressed from Alex Byrne and James Fogarty in their similar machine. The all Mayo crew were well rewarded for the all-nighter they pulled getting the new suspension into the car on Friday night taking the class 21 win and finishing 42nd overall.  An excellent start in a new J1000 championship for the youngster.   J1000 (class 21) is a new class in the Forestry Championship which kicked off today.  It was introduced as a Motorsport Ireland initiative and gives competitors between the age of 16 and 18 an opportunity to compete in the main field as part of a forestry rally.

Overall it was a Ford Fiesta 1 2 3 as Josh Moffett and Stephen Thornton won out narrowly from his brother Sam Moffett navigated by James Fulton by 0.6 of a second.  Keith Cronin and Mike Galvin completed the blue oval podium.

Lorcan Moore from Crossmolina, fresh from picking up his Sports Star award on Friday night headed south to the rally and navigated for Ashley Dickson. The Lancer Evo9 was a change of scenery for Lorcan as he had navigated in a Honda Civic the previous weekend in Galway.  The crew had a problem free event taking a fantastic 20th overall and 4th in class 4.

Calling the notes for Jason Dickson in the Fiesta ST150 was Lahardanes Jared Gill. Jared had to put his shoulder into it as the Fiesta had an off, following an overshoot, which lost them a couple of minutes on stage 2. The Mayo man not only pushed Jason back onto the stage he also pushed him to an excellent result finishing the day 2nd in class 2 and 31st overall.