West Cork driver, Keith Cronin and his Killarney co-driver, Mikie Galvin, have survived late dramas to take second place on the Malcolm Wilson Rally, the opening round of the 2023 British Rally Championship. The power steering pump on their Volkswagen Polo GTi failed on the penultimate stage, but they were fortunate that there was a Service prior to the final test. The Tom Gahan Motorsport crew replaced the system within the twenty minutes allotted time, allowing Cronin to head for the final stage through Greystoke forest without incurring any lateness penalties.
A trouble free run for the Irish crew over the closing 7.5 competitive miles saw them secure their runner-up place on the event, and take valuable points in their quest to take this year’s British Rally title. The Malcolm Wilson Rally was won by the French pairing of Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria in the works M-Sport Ford Fiesta Rally 2. They now head to Mexico where they will take part in the World Championship round next weekend. Elliott Payne and Tom Woodburn rounded out the Malcolm Wilson podium positions in another Fiesta.
With heavy snowfalls in the area over the previous couple of days, the rally organisers had taken the decision to shorten the route on safety grounds, cancelling the first three scheduled stages and deferring the start by an hour. The forestry roads were still icy in places, with all the leading drivers reporting varying levels of grip. The Welsh crew of James Williams and Dai Roberts led after the opening stage, but Fourmaux and Coria took command from there on, while Williams and Roberts lost time with a puncture. Cronin and Galvin were third fastest on the opener, but they then caught the Rally 1 Ford Puma of Jourdan Serderidis and Grégoire Munster on stage two and were delayed by a half minute or so, before taking fastest time on the third. However, the power steering woes were to scupper any chance of fighting for the win.
Cronin was happy with the result, in view of the mechanical scare, and the earlier time loss: “We would have been there or thereabouts only for catching the car on the second stage, and then obviously we had the power steering problem after that. It’s really good to have the World Championship guys here and to be on pace with them when things were going well, and some of the other guys were as well, so that was good. It was really tricky, especially on the first pass, you were kind of guessing where the ice was, but we got through it. It’s a good result, Adrien has probably done more rallying this year than we will do all year. It’s our first rally in six months, hopefully we can keep it going and get to the next one and see from there”.
The British Rally Championship will resume at the Jim Clark Rally in Scotland on 26-27 May.
Keith Cronin and Mikie Galvin are supported by M O’Brien Group of Companies, Molson Group, Keohane Seafoods, Inver Energy, Cremin Coaches, Cronin’s Homevalue Hardware, Cronin’s Centra (Ballylickey, Leap and Union Hall), Westlink Inver Service Station and Michelin Tyres. Their Volkswagen Polo GTi R5 is prepared and run by Tom Gahan Motorsport.
