I must apologise for not posting an entry for a while but I have been very busy in the last few weeks. The week after the Jim Clark, the website went down because of hackers and was out of action for three weeks as a result. I had an update ready then but it was irrelevant by the time the site was back. By now I have many more things to cover.

Firstly, I have to apologise to anybody who was trying to log on to the site whilst it was offline and explain that the hackers not only caused this site to collapse but also the other 30 or so sites on the same server. The fact that this site was targeted meant that a huge number of people were affected and I regret that, however, something of that nature won’t have an effect on my desire to win the BRC.

Anyway, back to rallying and although I was disappointed not to have won Jim Clark, in the following few days I realised that I had made the best of a bad lot and was in a positive mood again. I was invited to Kielder Forest to participate in the Greenerways Rally(which Mark Higgins won). This was an event organised to see how much less damage a new ‘eco’ tyre would inflict on the forest stages and although it would have been interesting to compete and use the tyres, the cost proved to be prohibitive. The options were to convert my own car back to gravel spec and use that, or to hire a car in Britain for the event that was already prepared. Both options would have sliced too deeply into the BRC budget so I chose not to compete.

Because of the long gap between BRC rounds I did need to get come competitive miles under my belt and we decided to do the Ravens Rock Rally. We also suspected that the turbo in the car needed replacement ant this was confirmed on the event, as it was not boosting fully. In the week before the rally Motorsport Ireland chose me again to represent Ireland in this year’s ‘Pirelli Shootout’ for Northern Europe, which will be held in Finland in the days just before Rally Finland. This is a great honour for me to be chosen for a second time to represent my country and I hope to represent it as well as I have done so far this year, on the BRC!

On the Ravens Rock event in Carrick-on-Suir we probably surprised many people. We knew ourselves that we should be on the pace of the top National Championship competitors as the pace on the BRC is faster than most people realise. We were however, using tyres that we had already used earlier this year. We surprised even ourselves, when we were able to open a 15 second lead on the first stage. We then went on to lead the rally to the end and win the event by over a minute. Greg and myself were surprised to win by that margin although we knew that we would have been competitive. It was also interesting to see Mark Higgins out on the stages spectating although his main job for the weekend was giving guidance to Dave Weston Jnr.

This coming weekend is the next round of the BRC the International Isle of Man. It is a nice feeling starting the second half of the championship still leading but this rally is Mark Higgins’ home event so we don’t expect to beat him here. This is the first event this year that will include stages that we have rallied in the past so we hope not to be to be too far off the mark! As always, if I can be close to the lead for most of the rally and there is a slight possibility of the win then I will go for it!

This is Higgins territory so that situation is unlikely to arise (despite my best efforts)!