Watch the 2000 Rally of the Lakes from 7pm Thurs 8th October

This week’s Motorsport Ireland – RIAC classic video from the RPM Motorsport collection is action from the 2000 Rally of the Lakes with commentary from Gary Gillespie and Alan Tyndall.

The year 2000 heralded the start of the World Rally Car era in Irish rallying with a large number of the all singing, all dancing machines taking the start of the Rally of the Lakes that year. Andrew Nesbitt proved to be the class of the field in his Subaru, but a refuelling malfunction saw him retire while in the lead, allowing Stephen Finlay in his Ford Focus to swoop to victory on his first competitive outing in four years. 2000 also saw the segregation of the international and national runners for the first time and the national battle is also included in this coverage, where Eugene Donnelly (who would go on to win multiple Irish Tarmac Championships later in the decade) and local co-driver Paul Nagle won the event, despite a dramatic visit into a field at high speed!

This programme will be available to stream below from 7pm on Thursday, October 8th.

​Next week’s upload will feature the second round of the 2000 Irish Tarmac Rally Championship, the Summit Rally. A one off inclusion to the calendar due to a number of regular events not running that year, the Summit Rally attracted an incredible entry, including former World Rally Champions Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist, as the crews battled it out on private roads over Slieve Rusheen on the Cavan/Fermanagh border.

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