Enniskillen’s Barry McNulty navigated Mark Donnelly to victory on Saturday’s Spring Rally in their Subaru Impreza. The pair dominated the Fivemiletown based rally, leading from start to finish to win by 25 seconds from Gareth Sayers.

The Omagh Motor Club event attracted a large entry of over 80 starters for the highly regarded loose surface event which covered more than 26 competitive stage miles over 10 stages, and it quickly became clear that the Donnelly/McNulty pairing were going to be hard to beat. Donnelly, the winner of the Pirelli Star Driver for his performances in the 2012 British Rally Championship, set the fastest time on each of the first five stages of the rally, and was able to cruise to a relatively comfortable victory.

Local driver Shane McGirr and co-driver Jackie Elliott were one of the favourites for the two wheel drive honours but their rally ended in dramatic fashion on the second stage when they rolled into retirement over a jump after suffering steering arm failure. There were a host of local driver who fared better however. Class one victory looked to be heading to Enniskillen’s James McGovern and Neill McGahey as they headed into the final stage with a class lead in excess of 30 seconds, but the pair dropped over a minute on the last test to hand the class win to Peter Jennings and Brian Hoy, with another local crew, Jimmy Thompson and Davy Johnston second in class.

Nigel and Leroy Mills from Trillick dominated class three in their Vauxhall Corsa setting the fastest time on nine of the ten stages to seal a commanding class win with Ian Thompson and Stuart McDowell claiming third in class.

Enniskillen’s Benny Grainger navigated David Kerr to success in class four after the demise of Enniskillen rivals Mervyn Wilson and Richard Gamble, while in class five Dominic Leonard and Martin Baxter had to settle for second after they lost a one second advantage on the final stage.