Last weekend’s Mourne Rally provided another chance for 20 year old Portglenone driver Desi Henry to adapt to his left hand drive Citroen C2 R2 Max. His eventual result of 42nd overall and 7th in the hotly contested class, does not illustrate the many minutes lost when the C2 suffered severe fuel starvation problems. The result at the weekend leaves Desi fifth in class five in the Hankook Northern Ireland Championship, despite this being only his second round in a class five machine, and fourth in the Superdrive MSA Junior Championship, after five rounds. However it could have been so much better on the Mourne for Desi and co-driver John Rowan.
“Overall we were happy that we had improved our pace on the event. When things were going right with the car, we were generally in the top three times in the class. On the Sperrins we were getting close to Barry Greer in the similar R2 Fiesta and on this event we took time on each of the stages that we had a clean run on. I enjoyed the car and it the tyres worked well in the dry conditions.” Dramas were aplenty however. An intercom problem, caused by vibration on stage one- Gullion meant that co-driver John Rowan was shouting, as he thought Desi couldn’t hear the notes. However onto the ordinary closed road stages 2 and 3 and they set second fastest class times, but the C2 began to develop serious fuel problems.
“The car started to cut out and the fuel pressure light was coming on. When we got to service we found that the foam in the tank was breaking up, we think because of some sort of reaction, and the foam was then blocking the fuel pick up. The boys cleaned it out the best they could but we dropped a lot of time on stages 5 and 6 when the car was stopping.” On stage 4- Gullion 2 they were third fastest in the class, and second fastest on stage 7, after a further clean out of the fuel tank at second service. However the problem intervened on the last two tests, and more time was lost. “We were lucky enough to make it home in the end. At one point I thought she wasn’t going to make it up a hill on the next stage. We will have the problem fixed and it hasn’t deterred us on our attack on the Hankook Northern Ireland Rally Championship. Indeed we are very much looking forward to the next round, the Dogleap Rally in the Limavady Forests, but before that we have the Citroen Racing Trophy Round in Donegal. Definitely the run on the Mourne has helped us prepare for that also, and I very much enjoyed the new format of the Mourne Rally this year.”
The PRH Construction and Woodland Kitchens C2 R2 Max is being readied at John McKillop’s workshops for the Donegal International on 18th-20th June, and it will be another opportunity for young Desi to make further improvements. Redacteur: PB Desi Henry | Foto's Hein Arns
