Irish rallying has a new hero, after Craig Breen won the opening round of the Ford Fiesta Sporting Trophy International in Portugal (4/5 April).
The Waterford teenager crowned a brilliant debut in Europe with a dominant performance from the start.
Fresh from taking second place in the Bulldog Rally the previous weekend, the Tom Gahan Motorsport driver travelled to Vilamoura on the Algarve coast to join the support bill for the Portuguese round of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
After two days of careful preparation, he and his co-driver, Gareth Roberts took to the shakedown stage and instantly set the pace. The 19 year-old said, “We were fastest in our class, and by a considerable margin.”
Buoyed by this, the crew then entertained a packed Algarve Stadium in a Special Stage that paired two cars directly competing against each other, and the clock. Going head to head with the man he’d beaten in the first stage - the German Patrick Anglade - Craig snatched victory by just 0.9 of a second and aptly described the experience as “like being side by side in a Scalextric race.”
The following day, the rally returned to the more ‘traditional’ mixture of tricky road conditions and exuberant spectators. In each of the three stages, Breen topped the timesheets as began to build a one minute lead over his rivals.Saturday proved to be “a lot trickier” though, as he candidly explains - “The slow uphill sections didn’t suit our little Fiesta, and in the evening we had our first problem. On the last stage of the day, we got a puncture about 9km from the end the stage. We were well over half way through the stage, so decided not to change it and drive to the end. That cost us a minute.”
However, it was time he could afford to lose, after having extended the gap to more than 5 minutes.
Deciding to protect their lead, Breen and Roberts opted to not make any unnecessary risks - but still managed to extend their advantage and move from 32nd overall up to 25th. Using the same tactic in the successive stage again worked.
Returning to the Algarve Stadium for the finale, Craig again found himself paired against Anglade - and again emerged out of the dust, and into the flashbulbs, as the victor.
“Once the dust had settled, we also found out that we’d won the N3 and Fiesta Sporting Trophy classes and finished 25th overall – equaling the record for this type of car in a WRC event.” He added, “We’re over the moon. We just missed out on winning our class in the Bulldog last week, so to come here, onto the World Championship scene and win on our international debut is a dream come true. Gareth and I both worked hard all week and it paid off. It's onwards and upwards from here! I must thank Gareth, everyone at Tom Gahan Motorsport, my parents and everyone that’s helped to get me here."He returns home this weekend (11/12 April) to contest the second round of the Irish Fiesta Sporting Trophy series, part of the world famous, Circuit of Ireland Rally.
