Eamonn Kelly and Conor Mohan had a challenging opening round of the Junior World Rally Championship. The Swedish event which takes place on snow got off to a great start for them with a 4th fastest stage time on the Thursday Night Umeå super special stage. They settled in well on Friday as they continued to learn the car and the gain experience at this level. A 3rd fastest time on SS4 (even with a spin) showed just how quickly they were picking up the pace against far more experienced competition, they even beat Grégoire Munster through this 25.81km test. Munster was voted the World Rally Championship’s most improved driver in 2022 and back in December was announced as one of the lead drivers in M-Sport Ford’s WRC2 campaign this season. At first service they held 5th overall but unfortunately on SS6 they clipped a snowbank almost flat in 5th gear. The impact with the bank catapulted the car into the air and sent them off the road and caused significant damage to the car and gave the Eamonn and Conor quite a scare when the car scooped a large amount of snow in through the collapsed front window. Luckily, they both were fine and the M-Sport Poland mechanics go the car repaired overnight and they were able to restart on Saturday morning.
With any hope of a good result gone, they spent Saturday getting the confidence back up after the crash and battling some mechanical issue which was causing the car to stall and cut out at times, but they persevered and even managed another 3rd fastest stage time on SS12. On SS13 the light bar on their car would break off over a jump and left them with very poor visibility over the two remaining night stages which added up to just over 27kms. Bad luck was back again Sunday morning when a large stone imbedded in a snowbank hit the car and bent a wishbone forcing them to retire for good. Despite all the hardship endured they are already looking forward to the next round in Croatia. The tarmac there will be a bit more familiar. The Croatia rally takes place from the 20th to the 23rd of April.
