The Quality Hotel Clonakilty West Cork Rally 2017 is just days away and the excitement is building with a competitive weekends action in store.

Although top seeds Donagh Kelly and Conor Foley will be strong favourites to win again this year, they can’t afford any slip ups with the calibre of the drivers lining up behind them. Alastair Fisher and Gordon Noble lead the Clonakilty Blackpudding Irish Tarmac Championship in their Fiesta R5 and are seeded at number 2, followed by the Moffett brothers Sam and Josh at three and four in similar cars.

Robert Barrable and Damien Connolly seeded at number five will be ones to watch as they debut the new Hyundai i20 R5 and it will be interesting to see how this car performs as it makes its Irish debut.

Stephen Wright and Arthur Kierans are at six in a Fiesta R5 while local driver Kevin Kelleher has Welshman Gwynfor Jones on the notes at seven in a Subaru Impreza WRC. The top ten is rounded off by the Skoda Fabia R5s of Joe McGonigle fresh from his win on the Mayo Stages Rally in Achill, and Brendan Cumiskey while Aaron MacHale will be competing in his Citroen DS3 R5.

The National Rally entry is also extremely impressive with drivers such as Adrian Hetherington, Brian Brogan, Wesley Patterson, Damien Tourish and Gary Kiernan just a few of the names that are competing in Clonakilty next weekend.

The Historic Rally has a strong entry of seventeen cars and they will start on the fifth stage of the event at Ardfield. The Junior Rally is currently oversubscribed with 22 entrants and they will get all of Sundays six stages.

The first car leaves the start ramp on Saturday 18 th March at 11am with the opening stage taking place at 11:45am. There will be nine stages on the first day with the final stage of the day Sams Cross to be tackled in darkness. Sunday will have six more stages before the first car arrives back at the finish ramp just after 3:30pm.