Jonny Leonard began his Irish Forest Rally Championship campaign with second in class on the William Loughman Forestry Rally.
The Fermanagh driver and co-driver Niall Burns took eighth overall and runner up in class twenty in their Mitsubishi on their first visit to the event.
Jonny admitted he was pleasantly surprised by his top ten finish.
“I was happy with how it went,” he said. “We had never done that rally before so it was a bit of a learning experience for us. It is a different type of terrain down there. The stages were quickly slippery and quite technical and took a bit of getting used to. We haven’t really been out since October last year so it took us a while to get into the groove of things.
“Then we had a bit of an oil leak after the first stage and we had to keep an eye on the oil pressure so we weren’t going too mad. We were second in class and tenth overall at the first service and I didn’t really expect to be that high. We pushed on then a bit. It was not without a few moments but I was happy enough.” The similar Mitsubishi of Pat O’Connell was the early front runner but Jonny was not prepared to take unnecessary risks in pursuit of the class win.
“We were really in contention for the class lead,” he admitted. “Pat O’Connell is from that part of the world, and we decided to let him go on. It would have been a wing and a prayer job to keep up with him. We were battling with Liam Regan. We were ahead of him from the outset but he was keeping us on our toes. After the halfway point we put the pressure on and he seemed to back off a bit.” Damien McGauren was another local driver who made the journey to the Carrick on Shannon based event, and he was rewarded with third in class in his BMW 320.