After 4 hard Rallies and 52 stages of nail biting action, Cronin Motorsport’s assault on the 2009 British Rally Championship(BRC) resumes this weekend with the team tackling the Toddsleap.com Ulster International Rally.
Having taken the lead in the championship on the opening round in Mark Higgins’ adopted North Wales, Keith Cronin and co-driver Greg Shinnors have retained it thus far, albeit now a joint lead after Rally Isle of Man. This has been a fantastic achievement on what has been their debut year on this notoriously tough championship.

In effect, the championship starts here, as after the 4 rounds so far 23-year-old Keith Cronin and multiple British Champion Mark Higgins are tied at the top of the table level on points after both have won two rallies and been runner up on two more. Five months after the first round in North Wales in March, it is now down to the final two events to determine this year’s champion. Now, before Ulster, is the final time this year that the championship can possibly be tied!
In reality, the final round in York, the ‘Trackrod’ International rally will probably have the most influence on the overall outcome as for this event all point scored are a multiple of 1.5 times the normal.
For the third time this year the BRC dovetails with the Irish Tarmac Championship(ITC). This means that the World Rally Cars that are not allowed in the BRC will run in front of the main BRC protagonists, with Mark Higgins seeded 5th and Keith 6th. Alistair Fisher, who lies 3rd in the BRC starts from the number 10 berth.
Because of the overlap between the two championships Keith decided to register for the ITC also and currently lies 8th overall despite having competed on just 2 of the 6 rounds to date.
The Ulster Rally is also a counting round of the Irish and English Mitsubishi EVO Challenge Championships. Cronin and Shinnors signed up for this championship in March at the West Cork Rally. At that time it was stated that all of the 2-day events would count as 2 rounds of the championship. These regulations were subsequently changed and now the Ulster Rally is the only multi- day event to count as only one round!
Because of this rule change it is now unlikely that the Cronin Motorsport team will score in enough rounds to qualify for the championship regulations! It will however be interesting to compare the times from the fastest competitors in both championships.
To date this year the Cronin Motorsport, TTEC prepared car has not missed a beat and hopefully that will continue for the final two rallies.
All in all, an intriguing weekend of motorsport lies ahead as we wait to see who will lead the championship into the final round in York!

Interesting Statistics from this year’s BRC
Stages run so far -52
Keith Cronin Fastest on 29
Mark Higgins Fastest on 19
Guy Wilks Fastest on 4