Craig Breen and Paul Nagle’s run of bad luck on the World Rally Championship seems to be finally behind them after they finished a valiant fifth on the Acropolis Rally Greece at the weekend.
Their run of bad luck started at the Safari Rally in June and continued in Estonia, Finland and Belgium through the summer.
Greece was the first time since Rally Italia Sardina in June that the Waterford/Kerry pairing did not have to rely on SuperRally rules to get to the finish.
That said, fifth overall was far from where they would like to be but their run in Greece was hampered by a Friday morning puncture.
The Ford Puma crew dropped the best part of three minutes when they stopped to change the damaged tyre on the 18km Loutraki stage.
As a result, they dropped well outside the top ten. A solid recovery drive through the Saturday and Sunday sections brought them back up to fifth overall and if the three lost on Friday were subtracted from their final time they would have finished on the podium in what could have been their best result since the Italian round in June.
They left Greece in sixth place in the championship after bagging valuable points in Sunday’s Power Stage.
“It was a difficult start on Friday, but I gained some confidence back on Saturday and we saw some pretty good pace and finished in a good position, so I’m happy. It was nice to have the Power Stage points as well, it’s great to end on a high,” said Breen at the rally finish on Sunday evening. “This rally was obviously pretty new to me, so it was great to go out there and see what it’s like. I’m already looking forward to next year!”
Their next event iS Rally New Zealand which gets underway on September 29.
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