Pat Slattery & Pj Dowd
Class Win – Sean Conlon Memorial Forestry Rally 2014
We entered the rally as two forestry novices not sure what to expect, straight away we were educated on how slippery the stages are when you have to run first on the road because of the reverse order to seedings. First stage was spent trying to survive basically with lots of loose gravel and absolutely no grip what so ever.
On to the second stage which was 17 km long and we definitely got a real feel for the woods and held a small 2 second lead in the class.
Second loop of the same stages was the difference between night and day.
We had finally laughed ourselves out from the first loop and decided we better get serious. The grip levels were vastly improved due to the traffic after the first loop and we managed to pull out another 12 secs on stage 3 which gave us a comfortable lead Into the last stage. Maybe we were too comfortable cause Allen Tracey managed to pull out a world of time narrowly missing out to give us the win by 2 seconds. To sum it up forestry rallying is without a doubt serious fun and great value for money. If you haven’t done one yet you really are missing out.
Pat Slattery & Pj Dowd
