2025 EMC Castle to Summit Targa Rally

Burns Brothers Blaze the Trails at EMC Targa Rally

The “Clerk of the Weather” must have felt guilty about the heavy rain last year because he brought dry and sunny Spring conditions for this year’s Castle to Summit Targa Rally, organised by Enniskillen Motor Club on 15th March.  Dungannon Brothers Jordan and Darryl Burns were popular winners in their Ford Fiesta after three runs over five excellent Targa Rally tests.

40 crews lined up at Necarne Castle in Irvinestown for the second running of the event, and an excellent start venue it is too.  Plenty of space for parking despite its proximity to the town centre, and the access roads made for a mixed surface first test almost a mile long.

Mechanical failures are quite rare on this type of event but they would intervene twice for rally leaders, starting with top seeds Damien Mooney and Tony Anderson in their Citroen Saxo.  They looked set to repeat their win from last year by setting fastest time on the first test by a whopping 5 seconds.  They held their lead until test 4 when a fuse in the power supply to the fuel pump blew, causing them to be given a maximum time for the test.  They managed to figure out what was wrong and repair it, but the chances of a second win had all but disappeared.

Damien responded with fastest time on the final test of the loop and it was back to Necarne to tackle the five tests a second time.  Once under way, a gearbox mounting failed on the Citroen and it was game over for the crew from Coagh. 

While all this was going on, four crews were battling it out for the following places.  Aaron Kennedy in a Mazda MX5, Jordan Burns in his Ford Fiesta, Eamon Byrne in his Toyota Yaris, and Philip Hunter in an MR2 were swapping positions from the start. At the end of loop 1 the order was: Kennedy, Hunter, Burns and Byrne with Kevin Daly in the unlikely Hyundai Accent tied with Byrne for fourth place overall.

During the second loop Philip and Dan Hunter would stretch their legs in the MR2 and build out a healthy lead.  Aaron Kennedy would pick up penalties on two of the tests costing him 20 seconds,  and putting him into 3rd place behind the Burns Brothers.  Kevin Daly and Alan Williamson in the Hyundai Accent consolidated their lead over Eamon Byrne and Ronnie Griffin by setting 2nd fastest time on Test 9, some 14 seconds quicker than the Wicklow driver.

LUNCH STOP

A break for lunch back at the Necarne Castle gave crews time to compare results before the final run over the tests.  Philip Hunter, partnered for the first time by his Son Dan, set off in fine style with fastest times on tests 11 and 12.  On the way to test 13 however, mechanical failure No2 took out the rally leader.  The tell-tale smell of gearbox oil and a clunking sound from the rear of the MR2 indicated a gearbox failure and it was an early bath for the Cookstown pair.

Having held second place all the way through the second loop, the Burns Brothers found themselves in the lead with just three tests to go.  Fastest on test 13, they were able to take it steady on the final two tests to win the top prize.  Aaron Kennedy and Ashley Boulton tried their best to snatch the lead with fastest time on those last two tests, but just 2 seconds was enough to leave the Dungannon men victorious.

Kevin Daly and Alan Williamson kept Eamon Byrne and Ronnie Griffin at bay to take third place in the sharply driven Hyundai, and the first of the semi-expert teams, Martin and Raymond McKernan filled out the top five places overall in their Mazda MX5. 

THE CLASSES

The Semi-experts rear wheel drive category was an all-MX5 affair, and a highly competitive category it turned out to be.  Martin and Raymond McKernan finished with the same penalties as Fergus and Catrina Mallon, winning the tie by virtue of a faster time on the first test.  Just 12 seconds behind this pair were Alistair and Jonathan Hayes completing a Mazda 1-2-3.

In the Semi-expert Front Wheel Drive category, another pair of Dungannon Brothers, this time Dougie and Glen Millar, took the top award in their VW Golf GTi.

The Novice category is for the newcomers to the sport of Targa Rally, and, like the other categories, is split into front-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive.  Local Irvinestown driver Kyle Thompson, with navigator Matthew McMahon, took his potent Nissan Micra to a comfortable win in the front-wheel-drive class, some two and a half minutes clear of the Enniskillen pairing of Josh and Ethan McGrath in a Ford Puma.

The Novice class for rear-wheel-drive cars was a mixture of Toyota MR2 and Mazda MX5, and it was Toyotas that took the top three places in the class.  In the top spot were the Donaghmore pairing of Michael Faloon and Sam Hayes, followed by Ballyclare’s David Purdy and Matthew Armstrong.  In third place was George Kennedy and Lawrence Baird from Larne.

The next targa rally will be the Dungannon Motor Club Springfling on 26 April. 

Full Results Book can be found here ===> RALLYSCORE RESULTS BOOK