At the Birr MC loose Autocross held in November 2019, the entry list included ten members of the Shinnors family from Bruff Co. Limerick.
Not an everyday occurrence in Irish Motorsport circles, we may need to scour the autocross archives to see if it is a record.
Left to Right: Austin Shinnors, Timo Shinnors, Catherine Shinnors, Alan Shinnors, Matt Shinnors, Greg Shinnors, Joe Snr Shinnors, Joe Jnr Shinnors, Elaine Shinnors and George Shinnors
Today, (December 4th) at the Champions of Irish Motorsport Awards in the Mansion House Dublin Matt recieved his award for the National Autocross championship.
On recce we came across a lot of different wild life on the stages, camels, zebra, monkeys, impala, Buffalo, jackal, cattle etc
We were told by the organizers not to stray too far from the car as there were Lions in the park also!
We did see lots of Zebra on the event and they are known cross the stage, I kept an eye on them as we passed them.
We had a challenging event, but I guess that part of the adventure, as they say if it easy everybody would be at it!
The weather was hot and 30 degC + and was challenging for us Irish in 3 layer suits!
There was some relief when the rain came it got cooler, but there were floods on the road knee high, a number of people were killed in the floods around Nairobi.
The rain had its own challenges with the mud pools, you need to trying and keep the car going and avoid breaking car parts due to water pressure, if you go to fast through the water/mud.
Catherine and myself competed at the Gorman Ridge Rally (20th of August) which was a round of the California Rally Championship. As the oldest consecutively running rally in California, the Gorman Ridge Rally is also the toughest rally in the United States. We drove a Toyota Corolla in the same team as former Irish Tarmac champion John Coyne.
The event took place in Hungry Valley State Park which was 65 miles north of Los Angeles. Hungry Valley was the location of the rally section of the X Games back in 2006 where Colin McRae famously rolled just before the finish line.
The rally consisted of 16 demanding stages run over the sandy and desert park with the last 5 stages at night. The stages had a mix of everything from narrow, twisty, to fast flowing to jumpy sections and some scary cliffs edges.
The outside temperature was over 35 deg C which made it hot inside the rallycars, the majority of local competitors had the T-Shirts which were cooled with ice water flowing through them.
There were some interesting vehicles competing the rally.
Ryan Millen was driving a Toyota backed RAV4. There was also a Yamaha 4x4 1000cc ATV and a...
Great days fun at the Kerry Rallysprint, after 4 runs of the Tar/Gravel track around the Tralee Race Course Catherine and myself ended up 2nd overall, behind former forestry champion Pat O' Connell in his Evo 9.
With the Escort arrivied back from Barbados in one piece,We decided to compete in the Sunset Stages Rally in Draperstown, County Derry.
The Escort required changing back to its gravel suspension beforehand, thanks to Conlon Travel we completed this change-over in Clones on our way up to Derry.
What we didnt expect to see was a crack in the alloy gearbox, thankfully Dessie Keenan TIG welded the crack after we removed the gearbox from the car. Problem solved.
After the first stage we were lying 4th in class and 3 seconds off 2nd in class, but I was finding my car set up not as comfortable as I would like. On the second stage I slide wide on a hairpin right and got beached, thankfully spectators were on hand push me back on the road. We dropped over two minutes and had a flat tyre to drive on to the finish of the stage.
After stage two we headed to service where we checked over the car and adjusted the spots for the following two night stages. With a lot of time lost on stage two we crusied through the last two stage.
