We found the three spectators that kept Kalle in the rally!

We found the three spectators that kept Kalle in the rally!

We found them.

Thanks to help from Mike O’Shea, the man behind the Killarney and District Motor Club KDMC2 Youth Programme, we found them.

Cast your mind back to last Saturday morning,

 The whole world was watching as two-time World Rally Champions Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen made their way along the famous Moll’s Gap stage.

Less than 300 metres from the iconic junction their Toyota Starlet ground to a halt.

No way. The crew that 1000s had come to see could not possibly be on the retirement list on the opening stage.

But live video footage (courtesy of Vantage Point Media) does not lie.

Kalle and Jonne were indeed stopped. An electrical issue had prematurely ended their first rally in Ireland.

Or so it seems.

The video footage shows three spectators jumping off the rock face and diving under the bonnet of the Starlet. Within minutes the Starlet jumped back to life – six or seven minutes lost but the rally’s heroes were still in the game.

The three lads fixed the stricken Starlet.

Minutes later the car cleared the stage where DirtFish takes up the story.

“The fans came and they were looking under the bonnet,” Halttunen told David Evans, “They know a lot about cars here! It started straight away and we didn’t have any issues after that.”

That prompted Evans to write: “To that unknown spectator, a nation salutes you and a big bunch of fans up and down the land thank you,”

Well, the thing is, the unknown spectator, is actually three, and they are no longer unknown.

Step forward William Lynch, Sean  Kenny and Jonathan O’Mahony, all from the greater Macroom area of West Cork.

Kenny, home from Germany for the weekend was supposed to compete in the rally in his Ford Escort with Lynch alongside calling notes and O’Mahony on the spanners.

However, the bulging reserve list meant they did not get a run. They were, in actual fact, the very next car to be called in off reserves.

The Opel Ascona of Kieran O’Kane got the last call late on Friday night and the three lads headed for Moll’s Gap to spectate rather than race.

As luck would have it, Kalle stopped right beside three men who knew their way around the engine bay of a rally car.

All they did was fiddle about with a relay switch until the car fired up again.  

Their job was perfect as the relay never gave trouble for the rest of the day.

“We just kept trying,” explained Lynch. “We did for it everybody who came to watch, but sure anyone else would have done the same. It is what competitors would do for fellow competitors.”

Fate kept Kalle in the rally!

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