Untitled 1

THE DONAL O'BRIEN MEMORIAL SPRINT

7 January 2024

A last minute, but very welcome, addition to our 2024 travel plans, was the revival by Mallow Autograss Club of the Donal O’Brien Memorial Sprint at Watergrasshill. For a few years it had become a welcome tradition that the first person to greet us in the new season had been Donal O’Brien at what started off as the New Year’s Day sprint meeting, later moved to the next weekend to spare everyone’s heads. This year, the first friendly racing face we were to see in the New Year was Nicole O’Brien, who was the driving force behind the revival of the event in her father’s memory, and who was stationed on the Watergrasshill entrance early on a very dark, extremely icy, Sunday morning.

After the sad loss of Donal, the popular events at the Kartworld Adventure Centre, just north of Cork city, were taken on by the East Cork Hot Rod Club, whose 2024 date is coming up on 28 January although, sadly for us, a change from the originally advertised date means that we’ll have to miss that one. It was pleasing to see, though, that both the Mallow and East Cork events quickly reached a full entry, meaning that there’s room for both in the calendar, with very little overlap between the two entry lists.

Mallow’s entry comprised the usual mix of Autocross, Hot Rod, Autograss, Rally and Drift cars, with a few circuit racers thrown in and, a new venture for these meetings, a class for Ninja Karts. The list quickly hit its 100 driver limit, with plenty of reserves on hand to replace the inevitable drop-outs at this time of year. A few didn’t make it on the day (some not quite ready, others thwarted by the extreme overnight road conditions) and 91 drivers ended up recording a time (with a few more present just for entertainment and passenger spins).

A 7 am start to scrutiny and signing on (when it was cold and dark enough to make the many Rally drivers feel at home) should have been followed by a 9 am start to the timed runs, but a thick layer of frost on the track meant that diverting everyone to the clubhouse for breakfast was a safer option. Before long the sun was out (and it remained a dazzlingly sunny day) and the drift cars were out burning the remnants of the frost off the track.

The main contenders for the outright win, and to be the first name on the splendid new Donal O’Brien Memorial Trophy, were obviously going to come from the BUGGY class, and there was a close three-way fight for honours among the rapid 750cc single-seaters. The first car on track, Conor McCarthy’s Lehane, caught up with a slower runner, meaning that he needed a rerun, and Conor took advantage by posting the fastest time of the first runs, from ex-Autograsser Daryl Culbert and another Junior special graduate, now of course a rapidly rising star in the Rally world, Jack Brennan. Daryl headed the times in the second run, and the third run settled things when Daryl recorded the day’s overall fastest time, all of seven hundredth of a second quicker than Jack, to secure the trophy, with results based on aggregate times for all three runs. Fourth overall was Trevor Culbert’s Casmat, and fifth was former East Cork and Waterford Raceway Junior, now also making a good name for himself in Rallying, Tommy Cronin, in a Semog. Completing the class were Jack O’Donovan, Donal Shinnick, sharing with Tommy Cronin, Eamon Glenny, David Corrigan and the shared Semog of David and Tom Roche.

A mixed class for NATIONAL, 2 LITRE and 1600 HOT RODS was dominated by the 2-litre Hot Rod Saxo of Paddy and David Curran, with Paddy topping the times on each run. Third went to former grasser Tom Buckley’s National 206, while Eamon Donovan came fourth in the older 205, a former Arena Essex Outlaw class regular last owned by SEGTO’s Laurence Connors. The only FWD car in the class was Luke O’Donovan’s Honda-powered Starlet.

The fastest saloon overall (just beating Paddy Curran for this honour) was Ian Laracy in one of the SHP-built RT200 cars last used in the Irish Supercar championship. He was in a mixed class for drift cars and “others”, beating one of Ireland’s most promising single-seater aces, Kayls Cole, replacing her usual Jedi for the day with a track day spec BMW Mini. The only one of the four Drift cars present that was actually competing was Fionn Roche’s Shanahan-sponsored Nissan S14, using its 700 bhp 3.4 litre HKS Toyota based engine more for drifting entertainment than going for times, and knocking off a fair amount of rear bodywork on the way.

The 2-LITRE RALLY CAR group went to Alan O’Riordan’s Impreza, after a battle with the G3 Escort of Danny O’Leary. Another former Autograsser, Cillian Doherty, beat father John for third in their shared Impreza.

Fastest of all the Rally cars was the 1600 RALLY CAR class winner, former Class 8 racer Joe Kehoe in a Civic. Very close to Joe on the first run was the Civic shared by Declan, Jack and Adam Browne, but they didn’t come out again. The biggest class on the day, with twenty drivers recording times, saw Niall O’Connell’s Citroen C2 come second from Brian Walker’s Civic and the shared Civic of Nathan Whelan and Jack Houlihan, with Nathan actually setting the fastest time in the class on his last run. Toby McGuire, running against the bigger cars with his 1250cc Mondello Fiesta Zetec car was sixth ahead of Andrew Sheehan (C2), Jonathan O’Brien (Fiesta R2), Barry McIntyre (Civic), Alan Houlihan (sharing Toby’s Fiesta and proving how sideways it would go), Shane Griffin (C2), Tom Dunne (Fiesta R2) and Tom Herbert (Civic). Nicole O’Brien joined in for the last couple of runs in Jonathan’s R2 Fiesta, while others who didn’t complete all three runs were Andy O’Donnell (MX5), James O’Riordan (Civic) and Turlough Kelly, who was unlucky to take a wheel off his RWD Starlet against the bales on his second run.

Tom Sheehan (Opel Corsa) took the 1400 RALLY CAR class ahead of Conor O’Connell’s Civic and the shared Puma of Christan Carraway and Declan Herlihy. Adam O’Mahoney was out in another of the Mondello Fiesta Zetec Championship cars, but only recorded one time

The 1300 HOT ROD class was headed by a battle between young Cole McGann and father Kevin, sharing a 1300 Starlet, with Cole not only winning the class with three consistent runs but also proving quickest of the non-spaceframe Hot Rods, getting into the top ten in the overall results. Raymond Darcy took third, bringing out his Civic to share with Steven Condon, with Jimmy Boland fourth in his Starlet. The familiar Starlet of Kyle Browne was this time shared three ways, with Alex Loftus, after withdrawing his Buggy, joining Kyle and Geoff Gowan. Conor Young used his Autograss Class 2 Nova and Adam Corbett was out in the ex-Dan Moloney Starlet, last seen at the short-lived revival of the Kilflynn track.

The 1-LITRE HOT ROD group comprised mainly Class 1 Autograss cars, but was won by the Hot Rod Micra of Mick Boland. Mick was sharing his car with Matt Murphy, who was second quickest but dropped down the order after an off in his second run. Trevor Cusack beat son Tyrone for second in their Mini, ahead of the Micras of Lewy Walters and Kevin Connolly, with more Minis completing the class, with Pat Doyle, Adam Galvin and Paudie Connolly.

The JUNIORS were split between Hot Rod and Autograss groups. Fastest of all, unsurprisingly, was the Mondello circuit/Rallycross car of Logan Hoey, the 1.6 BMW Mini in among the 1 litre Micras, but Logan lost out with a slow first run, having not claimed a rerun after catching a slower car. Hot Rod winner was Tommy O’Dwyer in an ex-Tommy Fong Micra, beating Ben Fitzgerald, Jack Roche, Sherise O’Shea, Oison Dick, Lillian Deane and Marc and Isabelle Falvey.

Among the Autograss cars, Sean Beresford’s Micra was quickest, but a slow first run time, for reasons we missed, put the West Waterford driver well down the overall order and Mallow’s Cian Cashman (Micra) took the win, ahead of Michael Lynch (Micra), Darragh Kenny (Mini), Shane Hickey (Yaris), sean Beresford and Patrick Galvin (Yaris). Also in this class was TJ Dunne’s Junior Rally Micra.

The JUNIOR SPECIALS class had just two entries, West Waterford’s Harry and Gemma Daly sharing Gemma’s regular car. They proved evenly matched, with Harry just taking the win.

Finally, NINJA KARTS were included for the first time. Four karts arrived, with six drivers. After a few issues resulted in none of them getting a time for the first run, they settled down with Dillon and Iain Murphy sharing Iain’s regular kart to take first and second, although third placed James Curran had the fastest single time. Sean Boland took fourth ahead of Ben and Tadgh Coonan.

With the sun setting towards the end of the third runs, there was just time for a few extra passenger rides before the results were ready and it was time to return to the clubhouse to warm up and distribute the excellent array of trophies.

On 31 January 2024 we learned of the tragic death of Daryl Culbert in a road accident. It was just a few years ago when we met Daryl signing on for his very first Autograss event and we enjoyed watching the progress of the very pleasant and enthusiastic young driver through the following seasons to become one of Ireland’s top Junior Specials racers. He then made the jump very impressively to the unlimited Class 10 Specials and enjoyed success at that level before switching disciplines to the Autograss buggies. Daryl undoubtably had a very bright future ahead of him in motorsports. Our sympathies go to Trevor and Heather and all Daryl’s family and friends, and to those of his two friends who also died in the accident.