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Circuit of Ireland Preparations

With the COI coming up on the Easter weekend and of course the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the Titanic, it is a fitting backdrop for the Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) to make its debut on this Island as round 3 of the 13 round series.
The rally orginsers are delighted to have a variety of International drivers, teams and supporters coming to the Armagh based event, which kicks off on Friday 6th and finishes on Saturday 7th. With the rally itself starting at lunchtime Friday with a Super Special stage at the newly built Titanic Quarters in Belfast and then making its way towards the Armagh area for the remaing stages of the rally with one Town Stage in the City of Lisburn on Saturday.
As it is normal procedure for the top teams to test prior to any event to find their optimum setup for the rally in which they are taking part, it is evident that they would want to sample the bumpy narrow roads of Ireland before they make their assault on this historic event. The county Monaghan roads have once again been selected for the testing exercise, as they were for the WRC back in 2009. This time there has been 3 different roads selected in 3 different locations throughout the county, 2 in mid Monaghan and one in our own Emyvale area close to Moybridge.
It is a great opportunity to welcome these people who travel the world rallying in different countries to our own area over the next few days. On Saturday the Factory works team of Skoda Motorsport decended on the Moybridge/Killybrone area with their main Driver Jan Kopecky in his Skoda Fabia S2000 test car. This Czech team of around 20 mechanics and technicans spent the day driving the 3km test road fine tuning the rally car untill they found the desired set up that they believe will win them the Circuit of Ireland Rally 2012. On Monday back on the same road the 2011 IRC champion Andreas Milkkison from Norway will also use the road to evaluate his Team UK Skoda S2000 with the same determination to win the event also. The competition is so fierce that the teams will not rest on just one road, or indeed one day, the will try out 2 other roads which have different characteristics in the county to find that average setup that they will record and log onto their cars. Over the course of the test days (Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues and Wed) a variety of other drivers from Finland, France and of course 2 of our own Irish drivers taking part in the rally will test in Monaghan. Dublin’s Robert Barrable and Monaghan Co Driver, Damien Connolly, will test their newly updated Skoda Fabia S2000 on Monday, with backing from Skoda Ireland and Carrickmacross firm Marron ACTIV8 Energies. Waterford based driver, Craig Breen, along with his Welsh Co Driver, Garreth Jones, will test their Peugeot 207 S2000 car with support from a French team on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As always with any motorsport activity it is important for residants and spectators to obey the organisers and marshals running the event. There will be areas designated from which specators can view with safety and the lead roads will be arrowed to the prime locations and please obey the marshals at all times and take home your litter and respect peoples’ property. The landowners along the routes have been very generous to allow this activity to take place and we hope that everyone will show their appreciation to them by respecting their property and privacy.

This is a major boost to the economy of Monaghan and our area and we are delighted that people like Damien Connolly has been able to attract this high profile Rally team to our environs. We want to make them all welcome but we must be mindful that they have come here to carry out very serious and very expensive work and work that can be dangerous so we must do everything we can to ensure that they get maximum benefit from their visit in safety. That is how we can replay them for coming and support those who have taken them here.

We attended the Moybridge Test Run on Saturday and the Clontibret run on Sunday and we have some pictures for you. If you are not into rallying and cars then the following will likely be boring.