Outright victory in the Corrib Oil Galway International Rally went to former Tarmac champions Garry Jennings and Rory Kennedy.

There victory in difficult condition was a convincing start-to-finish victory for the second year in succession in their Subaru Impreza WRC, one minute ahead of the Fiesta WRC of Triton Showers National champions Roy White and James O'Brien.

Alastair Fisher and Gordon Noble got their rally season off to a great start by scoring maximum points in the opening round of the Clonakilty Blackpudding Irish Tarmac Championship, at the weekend. Despite having to give way to the superior power of the World Rally Cars of Garry Jennings and Roy White the young Fermanagh driver still had over thirty seconds in hand over his nearest rivals Sam Moffett and Karl Atkinson after two days rallying.

After two days of hard driving through fifteen stages based at Athenry on Saturday and Tuam on Sunday, their Ford Fiesta was the highest placed of the R5 cars, behind two WRC specification machines that are not eligible for the title battle..
There was a clean sweep for Fiestas in the Tarmac Championship section of the rally, with four more of them, driven by Sam Moffett, Robert Barrable, Stephen Wright and Josh Moffett taking the next four overall positions ahead of Joe McGonigle's Skoda Fabia.

The six Sunday stages were badly curtailed by a severe frost which left the roads very treacherous and the first two stages were cancelled, while two of the remaining four were drastically shortened. This meant very little change in the leader board on the second day as all of Saturdays survivors were determined to score points on the opening round.
Group N was won by Stephen Hernon from William Mavitty with both drivers having to drop into Rally 2 having retired on the opening day. William Creighton took maximum points in the R2 class after his closest championship rival Marty Gallagher went off the road on the opening day. He did however re-join under Rally 2 to take championship points while Andrew Burke won class 3 in his Citroen DS3.

The modified championship has a very strong list of registrations this year and at the top there was a tremendous battle between the Escorts of Gary Kiernan and Damien Tourish. Kiernan overturned a 24 second overnight deficit to record victory by 31 seconds over his Donegal rival.

The historic rally was very competitive and saw a few lead changes before Ernie Graham took control and took victory by just over a minute in his immaculate Escort Mk2.

Richard and James Whelan in a BMW 1M lifted the Brian G Thornton Memorial Cup as the leading Galway Motor Club crew after a Trojan battle with Tommy Cahill and Enda O’Leary in a Mitsubishi Evo.

Provisional Points after Round 1
1 – Alastair Fisher 17
2 – Sam Moffett 14
3 – Robert Barrable 12
4 – Stephen Wright 10
5 – Josh Moffett 8