Boland leads Galway International Rally

At the end of the first leg of the Safety Direct Galway International Rally, the opening round of the Irish Tarmac Championship, Eamonn Boland (Subaru WRC) holds a 23.8 second lead over the similar car of Kevin Lynch.

Eugene Donnelly, driving a Skoda Fabia WRC, is in third place.

Boland was in the groove right from the start, he finished a difficult opening stage with a lead of four seconds over the Citroen Xsara of top seed, Conrad Rautenbach.

Former national rally champion, Peadar Hurson (Subaru) was third followed by Eugene Donnelly, Kevin Lynch and Gareth MacHale, who smashed the side window of his Ford Focus.

Although Tim McNulty completed the stage, he was forced to retire with engine woes.

Meanwhile, Boland set the pace through stages two and three and arrived at the Oranmore service halt with a lead of 21.6 seconds.

Lynch came through into second and Donnelly also moved up the order to hold third position.

Gareth MacHale, Peadar Hurson and Conrad Rautenbach completed the top six.

On the second loop of stages, Boland extended his lead to 35.8 seconds as Lynch lost time when the windscreen of his Subaru misted over, he also spun and dropped a few more seconds.

Even though Eugene Donnelly was off the road for some 20 seconds on the fourth stage and his Skoda punctured on the fifth test, he retained third.

Peadar Hurson continued relatively untroubled in fourth with Aaron MacHale, despite stalling his Ford Focus on several occasions, moving into fifth.

Rautenbach held sixth as Gareth MacHale dropped down to seventh after he lost some 90 seconds when the windscreen wipers failed just a few kilometres into the sixth stage.

Stage 7 was cancelled as a safety precaution, due to too much standing water on the stage.

On the penultimate test, Lynch cut 7.9 seconds off the lead and took a further 7.9 seconds on the final test to leave 23.8 seconds between himself and Boland at the overnight halt.

Damien Tourish (Mitsubishi) leads Group N.