With a tradition – unbroken since 2002 – of seeing its own renowned annual car rally won by home grown drivers, seeing off constantly tough competition from all over the place, the Isle of Mull has done it again.
The awesome Duffy brothers, Calum and Iain, won their seventh Mull Rally last year [2012], their third in four years.
Last year too, in second place was an omen for the future that has just come to fruition.
John McCrone, another Dervaig man, coming second to Calum Duffy last time out. was hailed then as a star of the future,
Tonight the 24 year old McCrone is 2013 Mull Rally champion, following a magisterial win by almost 4 minutes [3.57] over the very competitive [until the last four stages] 22 year old Peter Taylor from Carlisle.
Another Mull man, Eddie O’Donnell from Salen took third place.
McCrone went into tonight’s final four stages ahead of Taylor by 1 minute 14 seconds.
Faced with a choice of playing safe to be sure of finishing or ramming home his superiority, McCrone went for the big game and kept his foot down in a dazzling display of driving brinkmanship that blazed to victory over the finish line in his own village of Dervaig.
Piloting his MSport-prepared Ford Fiesta S2400, McCrone outperformed Taylor in his Ford Focus WRC, sticking to the road while, unknown to him, his rival suffered two successive offs in the first of the final stages, Glen Aros/Mishnish Loch.
The fact that Taylor finished at all is tribute to his driving skills and his stamina The offs had left his car with its innards exposed and a broken shock absorber, aggravated by braking problems in the last stage. But however despondent he will have been as the force of his challenge ebbed, Taylor kept his car together and took a creditable finish in second, in front of Eddie ODonnell.
So 30 hours of manic competition and screaming engines through two nights and an afternoon came to a conclusion in another win for a Mull driver and yet another memorable Tunnocks Mull Rally for all concerned.
The postscript is that the imperious Duffy brothers had to retire their Mk 2 Ford Escort with mechanical failure.
Today was McCrone’s. Will the ‘empire strike back’ in 2014?
