Johnny Leonard’s third place finish on Saturday’s Down Rally secured him third overall in the Northern Ireland Stage Rally Championship.

The Mitsubishi driver just needed a solid finish on the final round of the series to take a championship podium so he paced himself over the 31 competitive miles to ensure he reached the finish ramp with no dramas. “It worked out well for us,” admitted Johnny. “We just had to keep the thing on the straight and narrow but that is sometimes that is the hard bit. It was frustrating at times but we had to finish. It’s not really my kind of thing but sometimes you have to drive with your head and not your feet. We were third in the championship before the start of the rally and we couldn’t get second but I could have lost third if I failed to finish. Kevin Barrett and Kieran Graffin were tied for fourth and they could have inherited my place. We had a fairly steady first stage and were only fifth fastest but we were 30 seconds up on the pair of boys so we just went along at that pace and the podium just came to us. We didn’t really have to chase it.” On a difficult rally with a road surface that was often slippery Shane McGirr and Jackie Elliott succumbed to the conditions, sliding off the road and into retirement on the fifth stage while they were holding third place.

There were no such indiscretions for Johnny and co driver Niall Burns however, and he admitted third in the championship exceeded all his expectations. “I wasn’t expecting it at all,” he said. “If you had told me at the start of the year I was going to finish third I would have snatched it with both hands so I was delighted it ended that way. We had a few ups and downs during the year but we had a couple of podium finishes and that warranted the finish. It was good to end on a high. That wraps it up for the year, and there’ll be a winter rebuild done, and we’ll maybe get another attack at it next year.”