Garry Jennings took his first ever Galway International Rally victory with a convincing start to finish win in treacherous conditions. 
It was a successful event for local drivers with Alastair Fisher also making the podium, finishing third overall in his Ford Fiesta R5. William Mavitty claimed second in Group N, but there was disappointment for Chris Armstrong who retired his Ford Escort on the first day of the rally.
Jennings went into the rally hoping to turn around his recent Galway misfortunes, and there were no dramas this time around as the Kesh driver took the lead on the opening stage and was never headed, eventually coming home over three minutes clear of his nearest challenger.
“It’s nice to get Galway on the CV,” he admitted. 
“In the last two years I was very unlucky and something has happened to us when we have been battling for the lead so it was nice to get in front and stay in front.”
With Derek McGarrity not starting the event, Garry’s main competition was expected to come from Tim McNulty and Declan Boyle, but in difficult conditions McNulty was an early casualty when he slid off the road and out of the rally on the first stage. 
That left a straight shoot-out between Jennings and Boyle for the top spot. The battle was edging in Garry’s favour, but the decisive moment came on stage five. Boyle was trying to narrow a deficit of 30 seconds when he crashed out and handed the initiative to his Subaru rival.
“We were having a good battle with Declan Boyle until he went off and then I had to just make sure I didn’t do any damage to the car and just drive it through,” said Garry. “Conditions were horrendous. Saturday was narrow dirty roads with grass up the middle and the third pass was like a gravel stage because the roads were breaking up with so much rain. Sunday was two stages done three times so they were very dirty all the time, but the car felt good. I won by three and a half minutes but it could have been more. We screwed the car back and eased back. We drove it with no anti lag on and it was still faster than the R5s. It wasn’t really enjoyable on the Sunday because you couldn’t make a mistake. But it gives us a bit of momentum at the start of the year. Now we will think about what we are going to do next. We have not made a decision yet, but it’s nice to have the car sorted now and we can go and do whatever rally we want.”
After several seasons spent concentrating on world rallies Alastair Fisher is focussing on the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship in 2016, and he was delighted with third overall on the opening round of the series. With World rally cars not eligible for points for the overall championship, the Trillick driver’s finish nets him second place points behind the former double British Rally Champion Keith Cronin.
“It is nice to get back out again and get a strong result,” said Alastair. “We managed to stay out of trouble and got some good points on the board.”
Alastair was locked in a two day battle with Cronin, with little to separate the pair throughout the two day event. At the end of Saturday’s stages the gap was just over two seconds, but Cronin pulled out what was to prove a decisive advantage at the start of the second day when Alastair was caught out in the treacherous conditions. “We had two spins on Sunday morning which cost us around 25 seconds,” he revealed. “He had a spin on the second last stage and we took a bit off him, but on the final stage it was just about getting it home safely. They were probably the toughest conditions I have ever seen in a rally in Ireland but we were pleased with our pace against all the R5 cars. Not having been out for a while we were a bit unsure about how we would fare out but we settled into
the car quite quickly and the feeling was good so we pushed on quite hard and set a few fastest times. We were happy with how the weekend went and we have a good few miles under our belt in the car now.”
William Mavitty was making a return to the stages after a long absence and he was quickly onto the pace of the top Group N runners in his Mitsubishi. He quickly settled into second spot in the class and held that position throughout the rally, eventually taking thirteenth overall. Chris Armstrong was hoping to challenge for outright victory in the national rally and was well placed in second spot after the opening three stages, but a broken driveshaft on stage four ended his challenge.