Irish rally driver, Daniel Barry and co-driver Martin Brady, finished their first attempt at the Rally Islas Canarias despite their continuing mechanical problems.
The Mitsubishi Evo9 was plagued throughout the event with overheating problems in the soaring Canaria heat, forcing Barry to resort to stopping mid stage allowing the car to cool, as well as running with out the anti-lag system.
“It looks like it’s the head gasket that’s caused the problem,” said the 25-year-old. “I’m a bit gutted because we’re having to drive through the stages with no anti-lag, which is costing us about a minute each time. We try to keep the car as cool as we can and although it’s a bit soulless we can’t do much about it.” Daniel is known for his dogged determination, an refused to give up, “I just wont give up, its not in me”, he said, “we have come a long way, spent a lot of our own money and that of sponsors, so I owe it to them to do the best I can. It also makes sense to learn as much as I can while I’m here, and we have has such a good reception from the people of Canaria that I will keep going until the car stops”.
Continual driving without the anti-lag system bought on further problems on the final loop of 3 stages when the differential broke on the 25km long penultimate stage. “The noise was awful”, said co-driver Martin Brady, “it would have been so easy to have called it a day after the weekend we had endured, but we were so close to the end we just had to keep on going. We were 14th IRC finisher, so we came away with something!”
The event was won by Jan Kopecky driving a Skoda Super2000 car, with Brits Guy Wilks & Kris Meeke in 3rd and 4th places respectively. Finn, Juho Hanninen leads the IRC after the 4th event.
Daniel and Martin also plan to compete on the following IRC rounds: Geko Ypres Rally (June), Barum Czech Rally Zlin (August), Rallye SanRemo (Septmber), RAC MSA Rally of Scotland (October).