Motor Sport Digest/ DONEGAL RALLY: In winning the Shell Donegal International rally, French ace Sebastien Loeb gave a dominant demonstration of the simply awesome driving skill, and no little daring, that has won him three world championships, writes Brian Foley.
After 22 stages Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena in the works Citroen C4 WRC had a winning margin of two minutes 07.2 seconds over British champion and Irish Tarmac championship leader Mark Higgins and his Letterkenny co-driver Rory Kennedy in a Subaru WRC.
Loeb finished Friday's six stages almost 40 seconds down on Higgins. In torrential rain on Saturday morning Loeb cut dramatically into the lead, reducing the margin to 22.3 seconds on the first stage.
After SS8 at Knockalla, the gap to Higgins was down to under two seconds. On the second Knockall run Loeb led by 10.4 seconds, and proceeded to pull away from Higgins who just had no answer to the pace of the Frenchman. Eugene Donnelly in a Subaru WRC overcame many problems to finish third and stay in touch with Higgins in the Global Irish Tarmac Rally championship. Kevin Lynch's ding- dong battle with Donnelly for third ended when he was forced to retired his Ford Focus WRC with damaged steering.
Donegal's Paul Harris finished fourth in a Toyota Corolla WRC ahead of Patrick Elliott (Cavan) in a Subaru WRC.
Seamus Leonard was sixth overall and Group N winner in a Mitsubishi Evo 9. Saturday retirements included third placed Andreas Mikkelsen and sixth placed Stephen Murphy, who both crashed out.
LE MANS 24 HOURS: Audi enhanced their reputation as the ultimate Le Mans specialists with a fourth successive triumph in the sportscar classic yesterday.
Germans Frank Biela and Marco Werner and Italy's Emanuele Pirro, the winning 2006 trio, steered their diesel-fuelled Audi R10 number one to a relatively comfortable victory.
