Galway driver Aoife Raftery has moved into third place in the FIA Junior Rally Championship after another strong performance on Rally Islas Canarias.
The Craughwell-based driver is in her second year of FIA European Rally Championship competition.
Last weekend Rally Islas Canarias was the second round of the series and after a career-best fourth-place finish in Hungary in April arrived at the Spanish event in the same position in the championship’s standings.
The only female driver in the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy prefers gravel roads and loose surfaces as opposed to the challenging asphalt on offer in Gran Canaria.
She had to adapt her driving style to cope with the relentless amount of corners on each stage and spent the day learning the nuances of roads that are paved with lava.
The sensible approach netted dividends and by finishing ninth overall (out of 14 starters) she scored FIA Junior Rally Championship for the second event in a row.
The two top-ten results mean the Peugeot 208 Rally4 driver leaves the Canaries in third place in the championship.
Raferty’s relative lack of international tarmac rally experience meant she spent much of the event learning how to cope with her least-favoured surface.
“We always knew coming to the Canaries that we would not have the same speed on this specialised tarmac as we had on the gravel roads in Hungary.”
“The target was to finish the rally, the top ten finish was great and it is even better that we are now third in the championship as it returns to my preferred gravel in Sweden in June,” she said at the finish line in Gran Canaria on Sunday evening.
Raftery, who was co-driven by Antrim’s Hannah McKillop was the leading female driver in the event too.
The PCRS Rallysport-prepared Peugeot 208 Rally4 driver’s competition included drivers like Cristiana Oprea (Romania – Opel Corsa Rally4) and Ekaterina Stratieva (Bulgaria – Peugeot 208 Rally4).
After the event’s opener on Thursday night Raftery – who will openly admit she is not a huge fan of SuperSpecial tests – held second place in the Ladies’ category.
Stratieva had the upper hand by a mere 1.3 seconds but the Irish woman had only four seconds to spare over Oprea.
Raftery, who is co-driven by Antrim’s Hannah McKillop, started Friday’s six-stage loop in a determined fashion.
She quickly overhauled the Bulgarian driver and distanced herself from the Romanian pilot.
At the day’s end, and after nearly 100 km of competition, Raftery was nearly two minutes clear of Stratieva and a massive nine minutes in front of Oprea.
“It has been quite a tricky morning, it is a lot different. We are just trying to learn over the weekend and improve stage by stage, it is a big challenge,” said Rafter on Saturday afternoon.
“We are going to try and keep working on it over the weekend, it is a really hard event, very, very difficult, coming from Ireland [Irish rallies] it is very different.”
However, Oprea was excluded from the event late on Saturday night for an alleged technical rules infringement and Stratieva retired on the event’s tenth (out of 13) stage when her Peugeot suffered a broken driveshaft.
In the absence of both her rivals. Raftery was able to concentrate on her Junior ERC competitors, to finish ninth in the category and move into third place overall in the Junior Rally Championship.
