Service penalty costs Craig Breen and Scott Martin in Estonia

By Martin Walsh

On what was a test exercise for his forthcoming outing in the World Rally Championship (Rally Finland) Waterford’s Craig Breen (Citroen C3 WRC) and co-driver Scott Martin finished third in Rally Estonia.

They held second for most of the rally but collected a two- minute, ten-second penalty for a service infringement that demoted them to third. The two-day event was won by Estonia’s Ott Tanak (Toyota Yaris WRC), who finished 59.16 seconds in front of New Zealander Hayden Paddon (Hyundai i20 WRC) after the 16 special stages.

As part of a test, Breen went for a soft tyre on Saturday’s opening 6.24 km stage and finished 3.5 seconds behind rally leader Ott Tanak (Toyota Yaris). He was also second quickest to Tanak on the next stage and arrived at the service park 7.63 seconds behind the Estonian. Breen reckoned SS 3 was one the nicest stages he had ever driven — his stage time was only a fraction of a second behind Tanak. On SS 5 where he broke Tanak’s domination of fastest stage times, his Citroen clocked an average of 134.3 km/h. In overall terms he was 12.87 seconds behind the rally leader as Paddon retained in third but was only 2.88 seconds behind Breen.

Tanak was quickest on SS 6 and Paddon got his first fastest stage on SS 7 where Breen was stuck in a ditch for a few seconds. He responded quickly and topped the timesheets on SS8 but Tanak reeled off the best times on the day’s final three stages. It gave the Estonian an overnight lead of 20.7 seconds with Breen 9.11 seconds ahead of Paddon.

On yesterday’s five stages Breen posted one fastest stage time but was extremely fortunate to get away with a huge high-speed spin where his Citroen ended up in a field. Tthe time penalty dropped him to third but he was unconcerned.

Ultimately he would have to be content with third overall.

Dubliner Gavin O’Connell (Beresford Special) won the Clare Grass Surface Autocross, a counter in the Hyundai Limerick Motor Centre National Grass Autocross Championship. He finished some four seconds in front of Monaghan’s Derek Mackarel (Beresford Buggy). On the first of four runs Mackarel was quickest — two seconds better than Clare’s Eoghain McMahon (Semog Buggy) with fellow Clare driver Brian Hassett (Semog Buggy) third.

Mackarel’s time remained at the top of the leaderboard for the second run with O’Connell (Beresford Special) slotting into second from the Nissan Special of Kildare’s Ian Byrne.

O’Connell topped the timesheets on the third run and with the event decided on the aggregate scores from the first two runs and the latter two runs, he did enough to take the spoils. Mackarel was second and Limerick’s Mike O’Connor (Nissan Special) was third.