Season Review - 2025 SLIGO PALLETS Forest Rally Championship

A remarkable season of loose surface action saw Jason Mitchell & Paddy McCrudden crowned the 2025 Sligo Pallets Forest Rally Champions, in a year that saw a raft of new and returning events enter a series that saw record entry lists and a boom in popularity unlike anything seen in Irish Grave Rallying before.

The 2025 season though took a bit longer than expected to get underway, with the planned Donegal Forest Rally, returning to the calendar after a break of six year, having to be postponed due to the devastating damage left in the wake of Storm Eowyn, but thankfully Donegal Motor Club were able to work closely with Motorsport Ireland to secure an alternative date, and thus the planned season opener became our season finale!

The action did get underway in late March, as for the very first time the National Forest Championship headed East to the Carlow Forest Rally. Although based across county boundaries in Arklow, Co. Wicklow, the event attracted a bumper entry including the star appearance of late entrants Keith Cronin & Mikie Galvin in a Citroen C3 Rally2, fresh off their West Cork success.

Over six stages in the Wicklow Mountains, it would be the experienced pair, using the event as testing before their BRC season, that would take a clean sweep of stage victories, but taking maximum points for the Championship and a fine second place were Jason Mitchell & Paddy McCrudden, while the 2024 Champions Derek Mackarel & Eamonn Creedon rounded off the podium.

As the April sun shone, Dungarvan welcomed the crews with open arms as the Moonraker Forest Rally returned after a brief stint off the calendar, and this year it wound the clocks right back with the return of the legendary The Vee stage, and it looked like results had also been turned back a few years as it would be 2010 Champions Pat O’Connell & Mark Wiley who would stand atop the podium after a remarkable battle that would see the top-3 separated by just 3.5 seconds.

Battling against much more modern machinery in their Ford Fiesta R5, O’Connell & Wiley used every ounce of their experience to claim the narrowest victory of the year, finishing three seconds ahead of Niall McCullagh & Ryan McCloskey in a VW Polo GTi R5, with Vivian Hamill & Gary Nolan just a further half a second back in third.

With the introduction of the MI Rotational Calendar, every second year sees the return of the Tipperary Sean Conlon Memorial Forest Rally, and the Mitchelstown based 2025 event marked quite a few standout moments in the tale of the 2025 Sligo Pallets Forest Rally Championship, namely the first victory of the season for Champions Jason Mitchell & Paddy McCrudden, they brought their Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 home to its first win, and with it they claimed the lead of the Championship standings which they would never relinquish.

Introduced for 2025 at the request of Competitors, the Sligo Pallets Forest Rally 2WD Championship was a remarkable battle all season, with a remarkable seven crews taking a win over the eight round series, although it was the ground work set by wins on the opening two rounds that would see Hugh McQuaid & Declan Casey be crowned the inaugural champions in their Ford Escort Mk2.

Such was the variety across the season, that Cian Caldwell & Paul McPhillips (Tipperary) as well as Ben McFall & Damian McAuley (Donegal) took wins in FWD Rally4 machines, Shane McGirr & Denver Rafferty grabbed the Bushwhacker win in their Lada VFTS while Ford Escort crews Sam Stewart & Stephen Peoples (Lakelands), David Condell & Eugene Donnelly (Cork) and Damien Tourish & Domhnall McAlaney (Mayo) also got in on the victory parade.

The Tipperary event also marked a turning point in the race for the Junior 1000 title, although it would still come down to a battle on the season ending Donegal Forest Rally to determine the outcome of Irelands most popular class. With a record 30+ crews competing on some event as well as the prize package on offer from the Craig Breen Foundation for the winning drivers, competition is fierce in what has quickly become the ultimate feeder series.

The season kicked off perfectly for David Travers & Andy Purser as they took back-to-back wins in Carlow and the Moonraker, but Tipperary saw the emergence of James McShea & Grace O’Brien as they took the win, and backed it up with a repeat success in Mayo. Kyle Drury & Karl Egan, having been consistently on the podium all season, got a breakthrough win in Cork while local star Matthew Wray & Peter Ward took the season ending Donegal honours.

With such variety of winners and such a packed class, the battle for the title was always going to be close, and so it proved to be. Arriving to Donegal, Drury held an advantage in the standings, but an error on the opening stage left him waiting anxiously for the results to drop in, but it would be fruitless in the end as James McShea drove exceptionally to finish second, and with it steal the J1000 Championship by just a single point.

Having taken the win in Tipperary, the path towards a Sligo Pallets Forest Rally Championship title became a bit cleared for Jason Mitchell & Paddy McCrudden as they stormed to a second victory in Mayo, and took another maximum haul of points on the Jim Walsh Cork Forest Rally following the summer break, with event winners Cathan McCourt & Barry McNulty not being registered for the Championship.

The Enniskillen based Lakelands Stages Rally could have seen Mitchell & McCrudden crowned champions, but a mistake on the opening stage left the door open for Stephen Dickson & Ben Teggart to take the Championship honours on the event, and leave themselves in with a shot at the title alongside 2024 Champions Derek Mackarel & Eamonn Creedon, but it was not to be for either crew as on the 2-Day Bushwhacker Rally Jason Mitchell & Paddy McCrudden did enough to be crowned champions.

With the title secured, a final blast around Donegal lay in store, and although Eamonn Kelly & Conor Mohan took the victory, it would be the returning pairing of Jordan Hone & Paul Hone who would take the maximum points with a fine drive to third on the event, and a real boost looking ahead to a 2026 season that will see their local event The Dogleap join the Championship, as well as new events in Laois and Sligo alongside the prospect of a two-day Carrick-on-Suir event as well as favourites such as the Jim Walsh Cork Forest Rally, Lakeland Stages, Bushwhacker and Moonraker Forest Rally.

Images from the 2025 Sligo Pallets Forest Championship Prizegiving can be found here.