Conor Mohan navigates his way to another class win

Conor Mohan navigated his way to another Junior British Rally Championship round win at last weekend’s Nicky Grist Stages in Builth Wells in Wales. Conor along with regular driver Eamonn Kelly finished the eight stage event with 3.5 seconds to spare over another Irish crew of Kyle White/Sean Topping. Mac Kierans finished off his UK and Irish tour alongside Max McRae with 3rd place overall in the Junior section. On the opening stage, McRae and Kierans got off to a flyer setting the stage winning time by 2.4s from White/Topping. Kelly/Mohan were slow out of the blocks and had to settle for a fourth fastest time, some 6.1s down on McRae. On SS2 Kelly/Mohan were back up to speed and duly set a stage winning time by just 0.1s from White/Topping. Second fastest on this stage was enough to promote White/Topping to 1st OA after McRae/Kierans finished the stage fourth fastest, dropping them to 2nd OA.
On SS3, Kelly/Mohan once again set the stage winning time by another 0.1s from White/Topping. Unfortunately, McRae/Kierans would have a spin on the stage and dropped 8.9s, demoting them from 2nd to 4th. McRae’s spin was good news for Kelly/Mohan as it promoted them to 2nd and just 3.5s off the lead.
White/Topping were on a stormer on SS4 and went fastest by 6.4s. Kelly/Mohan finished second fastest to maintain their 2nd position OA. McRae/Kierans were credited with third fastest, but there was some confusion with their stage time as it didn’t correspond with the time Mac set on his stopwatch. The crew maintain they were 11s faster than the time they received. At the halfway point White/Topping held a 9.9s advantage over 2nd place Kelly/Mohan who in turn held a 10.9s advantage over McRae/Kierans in 3rd place OA. Johnnie Mulholland/Eoin Tracy another Irish crew taking part were 4th OA, some 40.9s down on McRae/Kierans. SS5 began the second half of the event and White/Topping continued where they finished off by setting the fastest stage time by 1.1s from Kelly Mohan. McRae/Kierans were third fastest yet again, but still only 1.9s down on White’s stage winning pace. White/Topping got their third stage win in a row on SS6 by a mere 0.6 of a second from Kelly/Mohan. McRae/Kierans finished the stage fourth fastest. McRae/Kierans would score their second stage win of the day on the penultimate stage. They went 1.2s quicker than second fastest Ioan Lloyd/Sion Williams. Mulholland/Treacy went third fastest with Kelly/Mohan and White/Topping finishing the stage in fourth and fifth respectively. Kelly was hindered by power steering trouble, a worrying occurrence with only one stage to go. Going into the final stage the top three were the same as they were at the half way mark, with White/Topping holding 9.7s advantage over Kelly/Mohan with McRae/Kierans 7.4s further back. On the final stage, Kelly/Mohan with their power steering problem sorted, went for the win and blitzed everyone by going fastest by 13.2s and more importantly jumped to 1st OA by just 3.5s at the expense of White/Topping who dropped the 2nd OA. McRae/Kierans also went for a big push on the last stage, but this didn’t work out as well as they had hoped as they suffered a spin followed by an overshoot, but still managed to hold onto their 3rd place OA. Mulholland/Treacy finished the day in 4th place to leave it seven Irish competitors in the top four places, an excellent showing from the Motorsport Ireland Crews.
Not only was Mac on the podium in the Junior section, his father Arthur, won the National section navigating for Alan Carmichael. The rally itself was won by Osian Pryce/Noel O’Sullivan with Keith Cronin/Mikie Galvin finishing 2nd.