MIJRS battles loom after summer break

What a year it has been so far as the 2025 Motorsport Ireland Junior Rally Series roars back into life for the second half of a season that will see some of Irelands finest young rally talent compete for life changing prizes and huge opportunities to progress their future in the sport, and renew battles that have raged across tar and gravel so far this year. Round 5 of the calendar sees the Class 2 & 2A crews head to this weekend’s Ravens Rock Rally.

Contested across select rounds of both the Irish National Rally Championship and the Irish Forest Rally Championship, the dual-surface MIJRS is a series designed to progress the skills of our brightest rally talents, and the prize packages on offer match the commitment of the series and its supporters.

Once more this year, the winners in both Class 2 and Class 2A of the MIJRS will receive a coveted Billy Coleman award shortlist nomination, while with the support of the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy there are prize packages on offer right across the lead competitors to a value of €50,000. As the MIJRS competitors get set to tackle the second half of an exciting series, let’s take a look at how the class battles are looking.

Class 2

Will anyone stop the rise of Cian Caldwell in 2025? Four events down and three wins under his belt, it’s fair to say this season has seen an incredible return to form from our 2023 MIJRS champion as he has found a real turn of pace in his Peugeot 208 Rally4 that the rest of the field are struggling to match, and he has taken victories on Tarmac on the Midland Stages, as well as both Gravel rounds in Tipperary & Mayo.

Behind Caldwell in second, and ruing still a frustrating retirement on the Tipperary Forest Rally, is Jack Harris who has made the jump to Class 2 in a Ford Fiesta Rally4 having dominated Class 2A in 2024. In third place is the real surprise package of this year in the form of former Circuit Racer, and Sexton Trophy winner, Jack Byrne who has steadily built his pace in a debut Rally season behind the wheel of a Peugeot 208.

Fellow circuit star and Karting star Oran England is only a pair of points off Byrne in a year to date that has shown some really impressive turns of pace and some stage victories along the way, while only for a frustrating mistake on the Tipperary Forest Rally we’d likely see Ben McFall, the 2024 Northern Irish Junior Champion, further up the standing as he came close to claiming victory on the Circuit of Kerry, finishing just shy of Jack Harris after a remarkable finish.

For many of the rest of the Class 2 field, it has been a frustrating first half of the season. Both Tommy Moffett & Robert Cronin have shown impressive pace, but both have suffered a pair of retirements each, while we have seen very little of Jack Brennan, Dean Murphy & Dan Nash this season to really know where they may end up come the end of the year.

Class 2A

Just as in its debut year, Class 2A has been, and is likely to remain, a really tight battle right to the end. It was Ross Ryan who left the Mayo Forest Rally the happiest of the Class 2A crews as he bagged a second successive maximum score on gravel, and with it now sits just a single point off the lead of the standings going into the summer break, a lead held by the class runner up last time out Jack Kennedy.

Ryan, making the step up from J1000 this season, has a real battle in store with the more experienced Kennedy as they both compete in Ford Fiesta R2T’s, with the mix season sure to have a role yet as Kennedy has won twice on Tar while Ryan has won twice on Gravel.

Taking third place is Tommy Furlong, a fellow J1000 graduate this year, who is really impressing having stepped up to a Ford Fiesta R2 and has performed well on his more familiar surface – gravel, while the sole non-Ford entrant in the class, Darragh Kelly in a Peugeot 208 R2, also remains truly in the mix just a point off Furlong with Drop Scores set to play a role in the race to the finish.

J1000

While our youngest competitors will not compete on this weekend’s Ravens Rock Rally, their MIJRS campaign heads to the tarmac of Waterford Airport Business Park for the Carrick-on-Suir Rally Sprint on July 19^th for the latest in a season that includes six full Gravel rally events and a smattering of Sprints for competitors as young as 14 years of age.

The last two rounds of the J1000 series, in Tipperary and Mayo, have really thrown the results on their head as early leader David Travers, winner of both the Carlow and Moonraker Forest Rallies, slipped off the road on Round 4 and then battled mechanical gremlins on Round 5, slipping back to third as a result.

Taking advantage of the situation presented the most was James McShea, his debut season in J1000 has now seen victories on the Carlow Mondello Sprint in December being added to with wins in Mitchelstown and Ballina, taking him into second in the standings.

The standout star in J1000 this year though has been Kyle Drury, and his incredibly consistent pace all year has seen him build an impressive eight-point lead, but deep down he would love to finally take the top step of the podium having finished either second or third on all five rounds that he has competed on this season.