Following the long-haul trip to Japan at the end of last month, the FIA World Rally Championship now returns to Europe for the Rally Ireland, the penultimate round of the season.
A new addition to the WRC calendar, this year is the first that Rally Ireland has been run as a World Rally Championship round.
This cross-border event includes speed tests in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Essentially an asphalt rally, the tight and twisty roads are bumpy and narrow – often little more than the width of a car - with many surface changes.
The more northerly special stages close to the border are used by farmers on a daily basis and will be dirty. With rain likely at this time of the year, they could quickly turn muddy and become treacherously slippery so a more gravel-based car set-up is likely to work better than a traditional smooth asphalt specification.
Special notes:
There are only 18,000 inhabitants in the small west coast town of Sligo, home to Rally Ireland's HQ and the service park.
It is located approx 200km from Belfast, which plays host to the event-opening Super Special in the grounds of Stormont castle.
The last asphalt outing of the year, the stages are unusually bumpy, quite unlike any other sealed surface rally and will make for a unique challenge.
Second hand World Rally Cars are prolific in Ireland, and no fewer than 36 of these cars are on the entry list.
The weather in November is as you might expect – unpredictable with the ever-present chance of rain. The surface is usually damp, and a mix of asphalt and gravel, meaning the cars are setup in a totally different way to any other asphalt event. Tyre choice will be critical with the changing conditions, and the very narrow routes and high speed mean it will be easy to make mistakes. Despite the fact that dusk will fall at around 1630hrs, the short spectator stage in Belfast will be the only stage that the lead WRC cars will start in the dark.
A pilot event was run last year that featured stages winding through similar areas to this year's route, however the exact stages have not been rallied before.
Totally new is the spectator Super Special stage in Stormont, Belfast which starts the rally on Thursday evening. The second section of leg one, the trickiest of the rally, commences from Sligo on Friday.
